Elizabeth Taylor’s Demands on ‘The Nanny’ Included a Tiffany Gift Valued at $5,000

THE NANNY, Elizabeth Taylor, Fran Drescher, 'Where's the Pearls', (Season 3), 1993-99, © CBS / Courtesy: Everett Collection — © CBS / Everett Collection

What To Know

Elizabeth Taylor guest-starred as herself on a 1996 episode of The Nanny.
Her appearance was accompanied by elaborate backstage demands.
The cast fondly recalled Taylor as charming and gracious.

Elizabeth Taylor brought a different kind of backstage spectacle and demands to the hit sitcom The Nanny when she made a guest appearance. It was one of four guest appearances Taylor made in one night of television for CBS in 1996. The Monday comedy night lineup had Taylor appearing in The Nanny, Can’t Hurry Love, Murphy Brown, and High Society.

In the Season 7 episode of The Nanny, “Where’s the Pearls?” which aired February 26, 1996, the then 64-year-old Taylor starred as herself. When Taylor arrived to meet Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) she was, of course, greeted by an overly excited Fran Fine (Fran Drescher), which led to a series of awkward star-struck moments (including Fran’s onscreen mother hiding in the closet and Niles barely able to talk).

An All-Elizabeth Taylor Night on CBS, as Taylor (front and center) guests on CBS shows (clockwise from left) THE NANNY (Fran Drescher), HIGH SOCIETY (Jean Smart and Mary McDonnell), CAN'T HURRY LOVE (Nancy McKeon), MURPHY BROWN (Candice Bergen), February 26, 1996. ph: Tony Esparza / TV Guide / ©CBS / courtesy Everett Collection

Tony Esparza/TV Guide/CBS/Everett Collection

During a cast reunion for The Nanny at ’90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 17, 2026, Shaughnessy, Daniel Davis (who played Niles), Lauren Lane (who played C.C. Babcock), and Renée Taylor (who played Sylvia Fine, and greeted fans through a remote video appearance) all laughed remembering the episode.

Davis remembered the star as “charming and gracious and lovely,” while describing elaborate requirements surrounding her appearance.

“The dressing room she was in had to be painted lavender. The towels and the washcloths had to be lavender,” he said. There were also separate kinds of water for Taylor and her dog, plus a Tiffany’s gift valued at no less than $5,000. Davis emphasized that the demands came from the people around her.

“But this is the entourage making these demands, not Miss Taylor at all,” he said.

Even a photograph became an event. After posing with Taylor on the living-room set, Davis recalled being told that his copy would cost $150 because it required retouching.

THE NANNY, from left, Fran Drescher, Elizabeth Taylor, 'Where's the Pearls?,' aired February 26, 1996. ph: Tony Esparza / TV Guide / ©CBS / courtesy Everett Collection

Tony Esparza/TV Guide/CBS/Everett Collection

In the episode, Taylor asks Fran to call a bonded carrier to take care of her black pearls, which she was planning to wear to promote her new fragrance Black Pearl. “Yes, my queen,” Fran told her, and chaos soon prevailed. But, as always, it was Elizabeth Taylor playing Elizabeth Taylor that proved she was always the most important character she’d ever played.