On January 30, 1985, Fran Drescher and an unnamed female friend were raped at gunpoint during a home invasion of her Los Angeles apartment. Intruders broke in, blindfolded and tied up her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, then assaulted and raped Drescher and a close female friend. The actress and her husband lived with Dan and Donna Aykroyd for three months afterwards.
“It's really hard. I felt like I was shattered in a million pieces,” Drescher told Fox News. “It took me at least a year before I even felt close to being myself. I remember I was once in a restaurant with my manager, maybe, but we were having lunch and a busboy dropped a tray of utensils and it made a loud noise and I literally jumped out of my seat and screamed. And everybody in the restaurant looked at me as I slunk down back into my chair.”
"I was raped at gunpoint in my own home by a man that I did not know who was out on parole. I was one of the lucky ones because I lived and I lived to identify him and see him sentenced to 150 years of prison without parole," said Drescher. “After the rape, my friends knew, but I couldn’t even call my parents and tell them,” she explained, not wanting to cause “additional stress” for her parents.
In other interviews, Drescher has said that the assault left her psychologically shattered, and that it took her at least a year before she felt anything like herself again.
“I at least have the closure, which a lot of women sadly do not have,” Drescher said. “But I do, that he’s locked away now for good and will never do that again and I don’t have to worry that I see him every time I turn a corner.”
“We were also very blessed to have very supportive, generous friends and Danny and Donna Aykroyd, who took us in that night,” said Drescher. “And we stayed in their home for like three months recovering and to this day, I'm very security conscious and if I fall asleep and forget to put my alarm on, I really marvel at that because that just for me, illustrates that I've come a really long way. But then as soon as I realize that, I get up and put it on,” she said.
Drescher has compared the post traumatic stress paranoia to what a soldier might feel returning home from war. “I don't think that you're ever the same. You can never be the same,” she said. “And I developed a deeper empathy for people's pain and an understanding of what it must be like – the horrors of war or being a prisoner of war. For me, the whole episode lasted about an hour or an hour-and-a-half – something like that.”
She maintained: “It seemed like in that amount of time, your whole body – everything – you don't know whether you're going to be killed or not. And you don't know who is going to get killed first. And who's going to be the last to live but to see the other two die? All of this stuff is running through your mind when it's happening.”
Years later, after she rose to stardom for her portrayal of The Nanny, which she also co-created and executive produced, Fran Drescher was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild union, SAG-AFTRA, on September 2, 2021.
The award winning actress/comedienne also founded a non-profit called Cancer Schmancer after she survived cancer.
Glad Fran survived! What happened to her “unnamed female friend” or her “close female friend”? Did she survive too? Thanks for this story & totally understand the PTSD and trauma. Many things trigger these traumatic & stressful events in our lives. Be safe out there!