SAG-AFTRA Presidential Hopeful Matthew Modine Threatened To Sue His Rival Candidate Fran Drescher

The 90s girls are fighting again! It’s election season for SAG-AFTRA and it’s already turning into a bloodbath with scrunchies and flannels flying every which way. With outgoing president Andrea Zuckerman, sometimes if rarely referred to as Gabrielle Carteris, off to California University, she’s endorsing her fellow Unite For Strength party candidate, The titular nanny herself, Fran Drescher, as her replacement and noted Rent delinquent Anthony Rapp as secretary-treasurer. But not if the Budget Dread Pirate Roberts from Cutthroat Island, Matthew Modine, has anything to say about it!

Membership First party candidate Matthew, who ran and lost against Andrea Zuckerman for President of SAG-AFTRA back in 2019, is running again this time against Fran. And he is taking it VERY SERIOUSLY. According to Deadline, Matthew has threatened to sue Fran if she doesn’t issue a public apology for writing in an email that he and his Membership First party broke the rules. Look, I know there’s a lot going on in the world today but no one, and I mean no one, deserves to live in a world where slander against the star of 2004’s family comedy Funky Monkey goes unpunished.

With just one week to go in the SAG-AFTRA election, Matthew Modine has accused Fran Drescher of defamation and threatened legal action if she doesn’t issue a public apology by Friday.

“Your defamation of Mr. Modine, your opposing candidate for SAG-AFTRA president, at the eleventh hour of the current election, is not only disgraceful and repugnant, but damaging to Mr. Modine’s professional reputation and career and hurtful to him personally and financially,” said Robert Allen, attorney for Modine’s MembershipFirst slate, in an email sent to Drescher on Thursday.

“I’m ashamed of Fran Drescher,” Modine said tonight during a MembershipFirst town hall meeting. “I’m disappointed. But she’ll be judged by the people in the world after she’s gone, or by whatever god she worships.”

I mean, shit! Did he just damn Fran to hell? And for what? Deadline reports that this was all over an email Fran sent to members regarding a recent ruling by the SAG-AFTRA national election committee that decided local news station KTLA was not giving “equal access” to Unite For Strength candidates. So it’s not like she called him ugly or dragged him for his performance in Pacific Heights.

At issue is an email that Drescher sent earlier Thursday to members in which she referred to a recent ruling by the union’s national election committee, which found that KTLA had “crossed the line from journalistically appropriate news coverage” of the union’s election to “improper promotion” of candidates running on Modine’s slate.

In her email, Drescher said: “Now they think it’s okay to violate the law and that the rules don’t apply to them. The non-partisan national SAG-AFTRA Election Committee found that Modine and Membership First broke the rules.” Her email included a link to a Los Angeles Times article under the headline: “SAG-AFTRA election board finds KTLA, Modine-led group broke rules.”

At a town hall meeting with members last night, Matthew spoke about the wretched nanny, saying her words were “slanderous and hateful and hurtful” before launching into a monologue so urgent, impassioned, and inspirational, acting students will be using it for auditions for decades to come.

“I don’t understand why anyone would harm another person in a way that members of Unite for Strength, and particularly Fran Drescher now, is trying to do. This is a momentary blip in the history of the world. This I know – every single person on this call will die one day. We will be dead. And we will be left with our memories. If there’s a god, and we lived good and just lives, we will be rewarded by that god that we worship. If there is no god, our memories – because we behaved good and kind, and helped people when they slipped and fell – we will be remembered in the memories of our children and our grandchildren for being kind souls who tried to make this world a better place for other people.”

Fran has 24 hours to respond. Literally, he gave her 24 hours to “(a) send an email through SAG-AFTRA, to the same recipients as the Email, acknowledging that these statements are untrue and apologizing for defaming Mr. Modine; and (b) made a public statement stating the same.” or he’ll have to get his secretary-treasurer candidate involved — Ellen‘s 90s TV BFF Joely Fisher. Remember her?!

Pic: Wenn.com