The richest kid in Tapwater Springs Elementary School and the main antagonist of the series, Nanette Manoir is the teacher's pet despite being an average student. She speaks with a snobbish American valley girl accent, but occasionally laces it with the cadence of a French one when she speaks. Her hair is golden blonde and styled into long Victorian-style ringlets in emulation of her mother's look (though it is strongly suggested in the episode "Gordy in a Plastic Bubble" that she dyed her hair blonde after Gina Lash looks at a strand of her hair under a microscope and sees that the roots of her hair are actually brunette like her father's hair). She is manipulative and has wrapped Mrs Brinks around her finger with constant praise and gifts, although Mrs Brinks has had moments of anger with Nanette, such as the ending of the episode "Return to Sender" after learning the truth about being a pawn (and "being un-French and uncouth"), giving her after-school detention when Angela read an insult that Nanette wrote about Mrs Brinks ("the other horriblé thing at my school is my very un-French, uncouth teacher who luckily I am able to play like a viola, which is French for violin"), and in the episode "Earhart's Heirloom" where she accidentally called Mrs Brinks' birthday "nothing" and is met with anger from Brinks.
Additionally, Coach Rhinehart (Gordy's father) has gotten angry with Nanette once as well; after finding out that she has been lazy the whole time she is appointed as Team Thistle's captain, he punishes her with making her carry every one of the other children's bags back to the school bus.
The perfect little angel to most adults (including her indulging parents Howell and Bunny), Nanette is devious, cunning, arrogant, snobbish and mean, exercising the worst of her traits on Angela and her friends, though she has shown the capability to be a very sweet person. The only known instance of this is in the episode "Secret Santa", where Nanette gets Angela an imported French cashmere scarf. This former personality, though, likely is the fault of her doting parents (who are snobs themselves), who fail to see how rotten their daughter really acts at school and never punish her for things she does wrong. However, in "The Substitute", she, January, and Karlene, unlike their classmates, are shown to not have a very good relationship with Ms. Klump (Geri), as the woman constantly forgets Nanette's name, dislikes Nanette's snobbery, and likes Angela. She is very proud of her looks, constantly bouncing her golden, curled hair, and she considers herself to be very beautiful, which may be true as her mom is very lovely. Her interests are a posh variety of activities such as baton twirling, ballet, painting, gymnastics and ice skating. Nanette uses her family's wealth and high status as a way of asserting her superiority over her classmates, especially and specifically Angela and her friends.
Because of her French first and last name, Nanette arrogantly believes that she is full-blooded French - a belief shared only by her mother Bunny. She sprinkles her conversation with misapplied French phrases, explaining their meaning incorrectly; for example, she believes "liaison" is French for "lesson", "crème brûlée" (singed cream) is French for "prove it", "pomme de terre" (potato) is French for "apple polisher", and "Crêpe Suzette" (Suzette pancake) is French for "overpriced pancake"; however, she uses correct French words and phrases in other instances. For example, in "Angela Who", she orders a large pizza "maintenant" (which is French for "now" or "right now"), and in "Puppy Love", she uses the French word "perdu", which means "lost". In "The Substitute", she uses a Japanese phrase, strongly implying that she may just be a girl that loves languages, or in other episodes, strongly hinted to be an aspiring Francophile. She also erroneously believes that Marie Antoinette was a natural born French queen (she did rule France but she was actually from Austria). Nanette's mother speaks with a Southern American accent while her father has an accent similar to that of John F. Kennedy, actually making her American (though perhaps her ancestors were immigrants to the United States from France, as suggested in the episode "Family Tree" where her great aunt was Beatrice Manoir, an US immigrant from France who lived during the famous Tapwater Springs fire of the early 1900s).
Nanette has a huge wardrobe full of designer originals, but nearly always wears a "imported, one-of-a kind" French dress (as revealed in "Curse of the Mummy") to school; to complete the stereotypical "French" look, she wears a black beret with a red stripe in it. (In the episode "You're So Vain" she wears a rather flamboyant pink frock with a deep pink beret (also seen in "Puppy Love"); in the episode "Goodbye Mrs Brinks" she dresses as a stereotypical punk and even nicknames herself as "Bruiser", and she wears pink lacy pajamas when she goes to sleep at night).
Like most rich girls in popular culture, such as Karin Kanzuki and Elisabeth Delmas, Nanette is a pet owner. She owns a poodle named Ooh La La, who is male, and her dog had a relationship with Angela's dog King in the episode "Puppy Love". She has a personal butler named Alfredo, who provides for her (and has been her caregiver and guardian ever since she was a baby as seen in "Touched by an Angel-a") but doesn't care much about her family. She also won the heart of a young Arabian prince in the episode "Who's Sari Now", the force of the wind blowing her hair (making her look a lot like Medusa) ruins it to the point that the prince is disgusted by her. Despite being nasty, Nanette does hold many talents, such as spending the entire episode "Don't Overdue It" balancing a book on her head (and staining it with hair gel) and writing a "three act Greek tragedy" in the episode "Ancient Greeks" and casting all of her classmates in "the lesser roles" such as Jimmy Jamal as Zeus, Johnny Abatti as an eagle, Gina Lash as Dionysus, Gordy Rhinehart as Hercules (who Angela hoped to play as), and Angela with a multitude of roles because she was disgusted by Angela's acting performance. In the episode "I Wanna Mould Your Band" she, January and Karlene appear to be singing the song "Everybody Wants to be a French Girl" very well, though it was later revealed that they were "lip syncing" their own song using a speaker concealed inside Nanette's beehive wig (which was extremely heavy because of it), which causes Nanette and her posse to be disqualified from a Tastee Twirl talent contest.
In the episode French Connection, Nanette becomes friends with Cici LeCreme, a Parisienne foreign exchange student who strongly resembles her. During the day that Cici and Angela were host sisters, Cici and Nanette became very good friends.
Nanette always wins the Student of the Week gold star and once threw one away, much to Ephegenia Brinks' shock and ire. Angela Anaconda and Gina Lash then hi-fived each other.
Trivia
- Nanette is voiced by Ruby Smith-Merovitz, who also voiced Cici LaCreme.
- In the console version of Tekken 6, Emilie "Lili" Rochefort can be customized to resemble Nanette, without her beret.
- The books Nanette uses for correcting her posture tend to get hair gel stains. The school librarian bans her from borrowing books because of that.
- Nanette, despite being from North America (assuming that the show takes place in Canada or the United States), puts a full-blown stereotypical Parisian act. However, this is averted with Cici LeCreme, the French exchange student, who is much friendlier and isn't quite a jerk as Nanette usually is.
- Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of French knows that Nanette Manoir doesn't understand one word of it. This is lampshaded on the show itself when an actual French exchange student (who can speak French naturally) visits and very nearly exposes this secret. It's lampshaded all the time by Angela herself, who is constantly berating Nanette for how 'un-French' she is. Among other things, Nanette tends to add misapplied French words when she speaks, explaining their meaning incorrectly, For example, Nanette claims that the word 'viola' is French for 'violin', when in fact they're two different instruments - the actual French word for violin being 'violon'.
- Nanette, despite her act, actually has a French ancestor, Beatrice Manoir. She was an immigrant to the United States who lived in Tapwater Springs during the 1900s.
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