A sitcom replaced its live audience with professional laughers during a star’s divorce

Evidence

The year before The Nanny’s final season, the show hired extras through Central Casting to be professional laughers. Fran was in the middle of a divorce from her executive producer husband Peter and due to her vulnerability wanted to avoid taping in front of a live audience. I knew the casting director, April Webster, who recommended me for the professional laugher job and I ended up working on the show every week, making more money laughing my ass off while knitting and eating for eight hours a day, and earning union wages. The double-dipping really paid off because I would also sell sweaters to other actresses and some crew members on the show. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 108

Categorization

• SHARE: A friend who works in television production would find this detail about laugh tracks and Central Casting laughers amusing.
• SEED: The economics of manufacturing laughter — professional laughers as union craftspeople — is a quirky article angle.
• XREF: connects to: Celebrity petulance toward staff was routine and tolerated on set — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 85