Everybody Loves Raymond star Ray Romano weighed in on his feelings about a reboot of the beloved CBS sitcom during an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. Romano starred for nine seasons as sports writer and family man Ray Barrone, who lives with his wife (Patricia Heaton) across the street from his prying parents (Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle) and black-sheep brother (Brad Garrett). The finale, which aired in May 2005, finished on a relatively open-ended note. However, Romano told Maher there’s no chance of a late-era reunion.
“As far as a reboot, well, it’s now out of the question because unfortunately the parents are gone: Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts,” Romano explained. Boyle died in December 2006, just over a year after Everybody Loves Raymond finished. Roberts passed away in 2017.
But it’s unlikely a reboot would have happened even if Boyle and Roberts were still alive, as Romano expressed his lack of enthusiasm for legacy reboots.
“They’re never as good,” Romano said of classic sitcom revivals. “We want to leave with our legacy as what it is.”
The idea of legacy was important to Romano and Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal even during the show’s massively successful 1996–2005 run. By the time it ended, the creatives weren’t sure they had anything new to say with the format.
“The rest of the cast was happy to go on,” Romano admitted, “but myself and Phil Rosenthal—who ran the show—we wanted it to end in season eight, because we just felt it, we felt it [was] time,” he said.
Romano has little reason to dive back into Raymond. Since completing the sitcom, he’s become a decorated dramatic actor. He collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the HBO series Vinyl and the 2019 Oscar nominee The Irishman, and is appearing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in upcoming period piece Project Artemis. Earlier this year, he wrote, directed, and starred in the well-received dramedy Somewhere in Queens.
