Fran Drescher and The Rock are apparently both fielding requests to run for president

Guys, remember the last time we had an entertainer run for president? That didn’t turn out too well, did it? Or go back even further: the last time a popular actor—one who was also once president of SAG!—became President of the United States? That kind of took a long-term toll on American politics, didn’t it? Do you really want to see that happen again? If the answer is no, then maybe stop telling people like Fran Drescher and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to get into politics!

Drescher’s popularity is at a new peak in the wake of the SAG-AFTRA strike, and now that the thing’s finally over, she has a little more time on her hands. Musing about her future with The Hollywood Reporter, The Nanny alum said she doesn’t “really see politics per se, but I do see myself doing something where I can leverage this for the greater good and be able to use my sensibility, which I think people respond to because it’s more authentic than maybe they’re used to from a lot of people that are out there.” Drescher said she now has time to “see what this was meant to do,” but added with a laugh, “Meryl Streep said to me, ‘This is great, now go run for president.’”

Meanwhile, people have apparently been telling The Rock that for years now, to the point where in 2022 “I got a visit from the parties,” he told Trevor Noah in an interview for Noah’s podcast (via People). Unclear which parties he was referring to, but “They asked me if I was going to run and if I could run—and it was a big deal. And it came out of the blue, and it was one after the other.” While Johnson called the situation “surreal” because his “goal has never been to be in politics,” he said the mysterious parties “brought up their own deep-dive research and data that would prove, should I ever decide to go down that road, that I would be a real contender.”

Back in 2021, a poll from Piplsay suggested 46% of Americans would support Johnson in a presidential election. But why, oh why, do people want actors to lead the whole country? Johnson has an idea: “I mean, it either means you are the paragon of what people would hope a leader would be, or it means things have gotten so bad that they are like, We need somebody who’s going to come in here and lay the smack down on everybody,” he said.

Yes, clearly things have gotten bad enough if someone wants a former WWE star to be our president. (Again, we kind of already had one, and it was awful.) Luckily, Johnson would rather be present for his children than President of the United States. But “If that’s ultimately what the people would want, then of course I would consider it.”

And if people other than Meryl Streep wanted Drescher to run for office? “No, I don’t want that job,” she laughed again. “Oh boy. But I do think that we’ll see. Time will tell.” Hopefully, time will tell these guys to stick to their day jobs.