In honor of the 30th anniversary of Everybody Loves Raymond next year, series creator Philip Rosenthal shared that he wants to have the cast come together for a reunion show that looks back on the hit sitcom. The series originally ran on CBS from 1996 to 2005 and starred Ray Romano as sports writer Ray Barone. The series focused on Ray’s life with his wife Debra (Patricia Heaton), as well as his parents and brother, who lived across the street from them.
While speaking with NME, Rosenthal said that now would be a good time for the cast to reunite since 2025 will mark the 20th anniversary of the series’ ending. He also pointed out that in 2026, it will have been 30 years since the sitcom premiered. The creator said what he wanted to do would be similar to Friends: The Reunion, which had the cast come together to talk about the show instead of continuing the story. Rosenthal also shared that he is talking to production companies about a potential reunion.
“This year we’ve been off the air for 20 years. It’s a good time to do a reunion special, the way Friends did a reunion special [in 2021]. It wasn’t a reboot of Friends. It was: here they are now – talking about what it was like then… We can do that next year when we’ll have premiered 30 years ago. We’re talking to production companies right now. We want to do it.”
For the special, Rosenthal says that he would like to talk about how they thought up ideas for episodes, especially since most of them came from personal experiences.
“We’ll all have fun stories because that’s where all the material for Raymond came from – from stuff that happened to us. If you worked for me, your job was to go home, get in a fight with your wife and come back in and tell me about it…”
Rosenthal also explains why a revival of Everybody Loves Raymond would not be a good idea. One of the reasons is that since so much time has passed, some of the show’s most important cast members have passed away. This would make it so that a revival wouldn’t feel the same as the original show, and it could hurt its overall legacy. Rosenthal’s thoughts on a continuation can be found below:
“Time has passed. People have passed away, so a reboot isn’t going to feel the same. It never does. There’s so much money to be had if you keep going. We felt like we had enough money. We’d all done well enough to live comfortably. Why keep going? We’re gonna actually hurt the legacy of the show.”
