The Nanny star Fran Drescher reveals hidden rape trauma

In an interview with Channel Ten’s Studio 10 on Wednesday, The Nanny star Fran Drescher revealed that she blamed her rape at gunpoint in a home invasion 15 years earlier for her eventual diagnosis with uterine cancer in 2000. 

“I really didn’t deal with my pain for many, many, many years – with the rape. So, when you don’t do that… I mean, I ended up with a cancer,” the flamboyant star explained on the show. 

“So, it kind of end up being very poetic in where the body decides to break down and create disease.”

Drescher’s ex-husband and The Nanny co-creator Peter Marc Jacobson was by her side in the interview, and he talked about the trauma caused by the home invasion and the rape of his then-wife in 1985.

“The whole rape experience was so surreal. Because people who talk about having guns in the house, it would not have helped. It could have been used against us,” he said. 

Jacobson also explained that he sought psychological help in coping with the impact of the event.

The couple divorced in 1999 after he realised that he was gay, after six seasons of their hit show which ran from 1993 to 1999. 

“You will never be the same,” Drescher said of the life-changing assault. 

“But whatever that is, forge forward with that and turn your pain into purpose which is what I always do.”

Do you agree that trauma like that which Drescher went through can manifest in physical illness?