Keeping Up With Kim Kardashian ‘Nothing to Do With Fun,’ Fran Drescher Says

Smiling cheek to cheek with Kim Kardashian “had nothing to do with being at a party or having fun,” according to Fran Drescher, the former Nanny star who’s now president of the labor union for actors, SAG-AFTRA. Drescher had to defend the company she keeps up with on Thursday, after Kardashian posted a photo of the two of them reveling at a Dolce & Gabbana in Italy.

“I am a brand ambassador for a fashion company and so is Kim,” Drescher said during a SAG-AFTRA press conference. “I had only met Kim seconds before that publicity pic was taken. It had nothing to do with being at a party or having fun, it was absolute work. I was in hair and makeup three hours a day, walking in heels on cobblestones. Doing things like that, which is work. Not fun.”

She went on to say that Kardashian, who crossed a WGA picket line to film American Horror Story in May, likely would have also preferred not to have attended the fashion show if she wasn’t contractually obligated to. “I’m sure Kim would have rather been at her home in Malibu with her children too,” she said. “But we work. That’s what we do.”

Drescher maintained that despite the party atmosphere, she was dedicated to her union, which voted to strike Thursday. At 10:30 p.m., Drescher would depart the lavish gala and participate in Zoom meetings, she said, and she spent the entire plane ride home texting with people.

During the press conference, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director, supported Drescher. “Fran was working, which is what our members do,” he said. “And for these employers to cynically try to turn our members against Fran because she’s doing a job that she was under contract to do while by the way, she was Zooming into our negotiations after work hours working 18 hours or more a day. It is outrageous. It is wrong. It’s despicable, and they should be ashamed of it.”

One member of SAG-AFTRA told Rolling Stone on Wednesday that they’d lost faith in Drescher. “I see Fran as a figurehead who enjoys the press and posing for cameras more than anything else,” they said. “Unfortunately, she’s the head of one of the largest labor unions in entertainment at a time of seasonal change and she’s not the leader of the moment but she’s the leader we have for the moment.”

On Thursday, the 160,000-member union decided to strike, following a month of negotiations. Hollywood now faces a double-strike as both actors and writers refuse to work until they get better deals. “The board has determined that union members should withhold their labor, until a fair contract and be achieved a strike is an instrument of last resort, we tried for four weeks to reach a deal with the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers],” Crabtree-Ireland said at a Thursday press conference. “And unfortunately, they have left us with no alternative.”