How I missed out on becoming The Nanny’s mom’s BFF
This is a cautionary tale about always doing your damn homework.
Back in 2006, I collaborated on a musical featuring the hits of Neil Sedaka, perhaps best known for such songs as “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Calendar Girl,” “Stupid Cupid,” and the show’s title song, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” The musical premiered at New York’s Capital Rep, then played the Actors Playhouse in Miami the following year. Then in 2008, Maine’s esteemed Ogunquit Playhouse announced a production to star Renée Taylor, whom I was vaguely aware of from the ‘90s sitcom smash The Nanny, which I had inexplicably never watched.
Taylor expressed interest in meeting with the show’s writers—me and Ben H. Winters—to pitch some ideas. “Ideas”? I was a little puzzled. The show was ostensibly finished. It had been published already, meaning any theater could license the material for a production. Our development phase had long ended.
Nevertheless, Taylor convened a lunch with us and the director, Gordon Greenberg, in Manhattan, at the endearingly modest location of the Applejack Diner, at 55th Street and Broadway.
The Applejack Diner
I don’t recall who picked the location, but looking back it seems entirely in keeping with Taylor’s spunky, unpretentious character from The Nanny—a character I now know well, because I spent much of the pandemic lockdown of 2021 finally binge-watching The Nanny. As everyone else on the planet already knew, Taylor kills every scene she’s in, with comic finesse that is clearly the friend to any writer willing to let her run with her unerring instincts.
But there we were, seated at the diner, me wholly ignorant of the comic genius sitting across the table. So when this charming and dotty personality pulled out of her purse what in my admittedly shaky memory was what I recall as a napkin scrawled with ideas and jokes to pitch us, I’m ashamed to say I merely humored her. We weren’t resistant—we basically said, Sure, go for it, Ms. Taylor. But what a squandered opportunity to glean from her decades of comedy experience.
Regardless of my idiocy, Taylor triumphed in the run, playing the proprietor of a Catskills resort in the 1960s. You can get a tiny taste of her turn in the Ogunquit’s sizzle reel here:
The cast of the 2008 Ogunquit Playhouse production included Renée Taylor, Farah Alvin, Amy Goldberger, Robb Sapp, Stuart Zagnit and Ed Staudenmayer.
I think about all the ways I could have handled it differently, starting with doing my homework for the meeting and according this legend her rightful respect. In my imaginings we’d stay in touch and socialize, becoming besties, with me sitting at her feet and soaking up all her no-doubt amazing stories, and maybe even finding a way to collaborate again.
But for now, I’ll just keep watching The Nanny and imagining what might have been. And the next time I get a meeting with a star I don’t know all that well, you better be sure this guy’s gonna do his research.