Fran Drescher has served a unique role in Hollywood for over 3 decades now bringing beauty, humor and style to every project she embraces. Nowadays she’s also helping people turn their lives around with health, wellness, and lifestyle awareness through her Cancer Schmancer organization, Cabaret Cruise, and Master Class, promoting cannabis, detoxification, clean, organic living and the mind-body connection.
It was a genuine pleasure to connect with Fran Drescher, and have the opportunity to be the first cannabis magazine to have her on our cover. You know her from her undeniably recognizable voice and her six seasons on The Nanny, a show she co-created with her ex-husband, who eventually came out as gay, which inspired the show Happily Divorced. She’s written several books including Cancer Schmancer, and Here’s Whining. She’s appeared in numerous movies in the past few decades, some of our favorites she appeared in were Jack, Beautician and The Beast, Spinal Tap, UHF, The Hollywood Knights, Hotel Transylvania (Parts 1, 2, and 3) and Cadillac Man. Fran was so sweet and gracious, and quite frankly one of the nicest celebrities I’ve ever interviewed. I grew up watching her show and movies and you can hear the excitement in my voice I tried to hold back in our podcast.
Fran was leaving her acupuncturist on her way to her holistic dentist in Malibu, California. We begin to talk about how surgery should be the absolute last resort, she then goes on to the importance of clean medicine, and continues by emphasizing that cannabis should not be the last resort. Fran referenced that clean medicine was the pivotal point of her talk at the recent Cannabis Science Conference in Portland, Oregon.
“Stand at a precipice of a new dawn here with this industry can be very lucrative but also very effective, but where’s money there’s usually greed, and where there’s greed there’s compromise of physical practices, with concerns to the growing, manufacturing, you know. The need to raise awareness about the environment, the plant and the user,” Fran said.
“That’s a big issue with me, because I’m very aware. I know a lot of people engaged in this industry, but as the Founder and President of the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a big cornerstone of our mission is to educate people and share awareness to realizing that How you live = How you feel.”
“And so, you know, the idea of this industry potentially being what dot.com was for the 90’s, may entice a lot of irresponsibility, from people that are just very short-sighted capitalists and not really thinking in terms of where we stand historically with this and the trajectory that we potentially can set in terms of responsible, sustainable, organic biodynamic farming that has the lowest impact on the environment, the plant and the user. Otherwise, this whole opportunity to establish cannabis as a first option as medicinal is going to be undermined and diminished and I don’t want to see that happen. So that’s really what I talk about. I have a doctor, I’m a cancer survivor, and I do use it for specific things, when I want to. But I wouldn’t use anything that wasn’t grown organically. I have too much respect for the plant to force it to grow in some warehouse with electric lights and a lot of fertilizer, when it really belongs to the earth, with a really healthy microbiome in the soil and growing in fresh air and sunlight. That’s my platform where this is concerned and I’m just trying to raise the bar and raise consciousness and make people start connecting their responsibility in this historic moment.”
Fran created her non-profit organization the Cancer Schmancer Movement (CancerSchmancer.org), which she calls a “pretty radical non-profit in the health space.” Their goal is to help educate the consumer about the toxins we consume around us every day. Her mission in learning from her own experience with cancer, is to make cancer not a big deal anymore, hence the name “Cancer Schmancer.” Her books and educational Master Class Health Summit teaches attendees and subscribers how to detoxify their lives and home from harmful chemicals, pesticides and plastics. She has this year publicly joined the cannabis education sector by adding the emphasizes about the importance of organic medicine.
“We talk about glyphosate all the time – in connecting the choices we make and empowering people to realize that their purchasing power, what they buy, is not only their vote but also their purpose.”
“It’s what we’re doing, it’s what we’re buying, it’s mindless consumerism that’s painting us into this corner, as we slip down a rabbit hole with our own lives. Even though we complain to administration, to the White House, we can try and change legislation, the fastest way to really see change is with purchasing power.”
“For example, if everyone stopped drinking cola today, they’d stop making it tomorrow. You don’t need regulation, you don’t need Washington, you don’t need anything. You just need to stop buying it and stop enabling the sociopaths who don’t give a shit about you or the planet, but only making money. That’s their god [money].”
“I just want to make sure that this industry doesn’t follow in the footsteps of twentieth century industrial farms and manufacturers. We can’t emulate that. We have to set our own trajectory now, that actually harks back to a much more basic, cleaner, sustainable family farm practices.”
“Start connecting it to what you are doing that is creating this dis-ease in your body. Listen to your body, honor your body, support your body. I look at cannabis like a supplement, like vitamins.”
She was 42 years old when first diagnosed with Uterine cancer in 2000. Doctors misdiagnosed her for two years before they tested her for cancer.
“People thought I had perimenopausal condition, because I was really not the typical profile for Uterine cancer. I was not post-menopausal and I was not obese and I was too young, although 1 out of 4 women are young and things who get it. I don’t know why they wouldn’t have just tested me to rule that out with a simple endometria biopsy, but they didn’t. I complained about leg pain, and they thought I had restless leg syndrome, even though I correlated it with the complaint that Gilda Radner had. I complained that my stool was changing, they said I was eating too much spinach. I complained that my breasts were too hard, they said I had the ‘tits of an 18 year old.’”
“So there I was, with perky breasts, they said take gin and tonic to go to bed for the restless leg, stop eating so much spinach. So I did all that in an attempt to cure myself. All the while, I had Uterine Cancer.”
Cancer Schmancer has “Fran Vans” that help get access to low-income people to get early testing done for early detection.
When Fran came out of surgery for her hysterectomy she was notified they has taken her appendix as well. They told her it was standard hospital protocol, to which she replied, “You could have told me you were going to take a functioning organ of mine.”
The appendix regulates the lymphatic system. Fran attributes a constant flux of inflammation in her body because of the removal of her functioning organ. Her Master Class Health Summit brings world-renowned Doctors and Dentists together to further educate on moving away from harmful Western medicine practices, like root canals and removing functioning organs.
Her encounter with Uterine cancer began Fran’s path to discovering alternative health and wellness treatments.
“This was 18 years ago. They said a radical hysterectomy would essentially cure me, then two weeks after the surgery they said that I could do breakia therapy on the vaginal cuff to just make sure that no floater cells got stuck there when they sewed me up. I opted out of that, after doing research and realizing that kind of radiation is not without permanent side effects. I already was given a 95% chance of non-recurrence. I thought that was good enough for me. I’m not going to ruin what’s left of me, in perfect or imperfect working order,” she said.
Prior to that encounter with cancer, Fran and her husband at the time, experienced a horrific home invasion, where she and her girl friend who was over for dinner, were violently raped in 1985. In other interviews, Fran had mentioned experiencing Post Traumatic Stress, as well as Post Traumatic Growth (where you throw yourself into work after a traumatic experience in order to cope but experience tremendous growth in a short period of time, without actually dealing with the heart of the problem).
When asked if she used cannabis for PTSD from that event she said, “It depends, I did smoke pot then. The night that it happened I had already quit cigarette smoking and I recall sitting there, with a joint in one hand and a cigarette in the other.”
“I think that how people react to it is very personal and individual. If it’s going to make you paranoid, it [cannabis] may not be for you. I had to also come to terms with the fact that I might have used to pot sometimes to numb myself from my feelings. I had to deal with that. I had to come to terms with that and start facing my feelings, instead of numbing myself from them.”
“Once I started doing that and getting in touch with it [my feelings] in psychotherapy, it automatically reduced my pot usage, I think in a very healthy way. I got into the habit of feeling my feelings, expressing my feelings, and pot became more of an occasional social indulgence. Back then its medicinal qualities and aspects and cannabinoid support wasn’t being widely discussed.”
When asked what her most memorable moments from her Nanny days were, she said, “Definitely having my own parking spot with my name on it in the lot, made me feel like I ‘made it.’ Being on the cover of TV Guide. Having guests like Elton John and Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Midler Dan Aykroyd, Jay Leno, Whoopi Goldberg, Ray Charles, and Rosie O’Donnell were just some of the unbelievable guests over the years.”
“Those were all incredible experiences and having so much to say and do about it, writing and starring in it, sometimes directing and executive producing, it was a quite a momentous experience that continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.”
If you hope to see a reboot or spin-off of The Nanny, Fran said, “I’m not opposed to it. But no one’s called about it, and I think that for us a reboot would really be the characters 20 years later, there would be some similarities, but it couldn’t be the same show. And that in it of itself might be problematic. I don’t know. I’m working on a lot of other projects right now and people always ask about it. But nobody’s called.”
In 2008, Fran announced that she was considering running for the Senate to succeed Hillary Clinton. When asked if she would consider running again she said, “I think I had got a series or something, I don’t really remember, all I know is that I’m always being urged to run.”
“I kind of have decided that it’s such a polarizing congress that I can wield more influence as a celebrity, because now we have social media and I worry that because my adrenals don’t work so well, I have to keep my stress levels as low as possible. I don’t think that’s possible to do that in congress. Also, there are other platforms I am passionate about and that’s all I really want to focus on.”
“I don’t want to spend half my life trying to raise money to campaign, or speaking to rotary clubs about their concerns, which are legitimate to them, but not really legitimate to me. When you’re an elected official you have to serve all the people, I appreciate that completely. But I think that at this stage in my life and the way that congress is going I can accomplish more outside of that system.”
At Fran Drescher’s annual Cabaret Cruise, guests sail away for an exclusive, all-VIP experience with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, dinner with Fran and a night of New York’s finest cabaret talent. “Every June in New York Harbor, I speak, everyone who comes gets to take a picture with me and then we sail around New York harbor for an intimate gourmet dinner and have live musical performances straight off of Broadway, all aboard the Hornblower Infinity. It’s a Fundraiser for Cancer Schmancer.”
Oct 23rd is Fran’s Master Class Health Summit in Los Angeles, featuring topics like Cutting-Edge Research, New Treatments, Eastern & Western Medicine, Functional Medicine, GMOs, Mental Health, Medical Cannabis, Detoxing Your Home, Whole Body Wellness, and the Mind-Body Connection.
“It promises to be a mind blowing game changing day for all who attend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It’s an all day thing, and everyone has their pad and pen. People can’t wait to come back year after year. We offer them highly accredited doctors who are outside of the box thinkers. Doctors who went to medical school, drank the Kool-Aid, and then got woke and realized there’s a better way. We have Dr. Uma Dhanabalan, a Harvard Medical Doctor turned Cannabis and Cannabinoid Expert whose mission is to ‘Educate, Embrace, Empower’ through her organization, Total Health Care THC.“
“I think that what we’re doing can affect real change. They say millennials are the 1st generation in US history predicted to not live as long as their parents, and we need to be sure we don’t make that a self fulfilling prophecy. They may not vote or pay taxes on homes the same way, but they still wield power as mindful consumers the same way I saw I could use my celebrity for good.”
“My Master class shows the connections between lifestyle and dis-ease, and other lifestyles available besides what’s recommended by western medicine. It‘s the business of sickness they’re in and not wellness, but the more you talk and the more you influence people, the more you see the age of enlightenment is taking hold. We were talking about GMOs and cannabis before anyone. Someone as high profile as me can really help when you addresses issues. There’s all kinds of things people don’t normally even think about, but with proper food and nutrition even alzheimer’s can be reversed.”
“At the Master Class we have Dr. Gerry Curatola, a biologic dentist and expert on the mouth/body connection, cancers of the mouth, and the potential harm caused by root canals. Everything in your mouth is connected to a different meridien. When the tooth is dead, there are molars directly linked to your breasts. Remember too. you are what you eat.”
“Now I’m trying to focus on Reducing my EMF (electromagnetic field). At night before I go to bed, I shut off the wifi so the brain can regenerate, or else you can’t rest. It’s deeply pervasive. our brain can’t really rest with all that WiFi buzzing around you. So many things still need to be addressed, the 20th century was such a debacle.”
When asked where she saw the cannabis industry being five years from now she told us, “In 5 years, I’m hoping it [cannabis] becomes an exemplary leader in a new industry, with farming practices that are humane and sustainable that show how it can impact in a positive way, the mind, body and spirit.”
When asked how she maintains looking so young and beautiful, Fran says, “Look for non-gmo, organic food. It takes more time and energy but you’ll see that labeling reflects that marketing is listening to consumer demands. My best beauty tips would be to use clean safe cosmetics. Read the book, ‘Not Just a Pretty Face’. I don’t wear makeup most of the time, but the moisturizers, deodorant I use are organic, non-GMO. I also embrace the organic coffee enema protocol. It keeps your liver clean. Your liver is your carburetor and it has to clean your blood, so a toxic lifestyle makes it hard for the body to heal itself. We need to live in a toxic free home. It goes back to how I eat, I support restaurants that serve organic food and grass fed meat. Be sure you ask them, don’t just read the menu. You don’t want to eat animals shot up with antibiotics and fed GMO grain that isn’t natural for their digestive system.”
“They aren’t really trying to kill us because they want to keep us as customers. They want to believe that in small doses, it’s not dangerous but they suffer from the exact same diseases, but are completely sociopathic, so they don’t care. They only care about money.”
Read more about Fran Drescher and support her cause at CancerSchmancer.org
B. Le Grand
