It’s been nearly 19 years since “Everybody Loves Raymond” star Peter Boyle died but Ray Romano, his onscreen son and the lead of the beloved sitcom, still remembers the lasting impression the late actor had on him.
During Monday’s “Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion” special on CBS, stars of the show — including Romano, Patricia Heaton, Brad Garrett and Monica Horan — and creator Phil Rosenthal reunited to celebrate the show’s upcoming 30th anniversary and reminisce about some of their favorite memories on screen and off-screen.
At one point during the special, the cast paid tribute to the late Doris Roberts — who portrayed Romano’s onscreen mother, Marie Barone — and Boyle, who died in 2006 after suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease. He was 71.
“During the pilot episode, I’m a young guy who just got fired from news radio and here I am again attempting a show and I’m nervous,” Romano recalled.
“And Peter is the great Peter Boyle, this iconic guy. He’s an imposing figure. I didn’t know then how sweet he really was.”
“I hadn’t really had a conversation with Peter,” he continued. “Our paths were crossing [on set] and he just stops me, and I haven’t said anything to him… he could tell I was a little nervous and he just looks at me and he goes, ‘It’s just like water. Just let it flow.’ And then he leaves.”
“At that time, I’m like ‘What does that mean?’ And even though as an actor I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I do now,” Romano said, while getting emotional. “Just the gesture of him reaching out to me…”
“Everybody Loves Raymond” aired on CBS from 1996 to 2005 and starred Romano as Ray Barone, a sportswriter living on Long Island across the street from his family. Heaton played his wife, Debra, along with Garrett as his brother Robert, and Boyle and Doris Roberts as his loving but overbearing parents.
The show earned 15 Primetime Emmys over the course of its run, including two outstanding comedy series wins and one outstanding lead actor in a comedy win for Romano.
Though it’s been nearly 30 years since “Everybody Loves Raymond” premiered, the hit has remained “timeless,” Rosenthal previously told Fox News Digital.
“Well, [“Everybody Loves Raymond”] was designed to be timeless. And we did that by not having topical jokes, jokes of the day, you know?” Rosenthal said of the show, which premiered in September 1996. “It would’ve been easy to do Bill Clinton jokes, let’s say, when we were first up. But that dates the show. So we did things that we thought might be universal. Relationships, marriage, sibling rivalry, having kids, having parents. And so it has lasted and this year coming up it will have been 30 years since we were on the air.”
Rosenthal recalled that pivotal moment when he knew the show would be a hit.
“It was like the third episode. Something happened and we got like a 30-second laugh at something from an audience that hadn’t seen the show yet,” he said. “It hadn’t been on TV yet. In the beginning, you’re just filming a bunch of shows and you’re trying to get any audience you can and they would come, and they didn’t know what they were watching. But this laugh was so big that it went beyond just a bit. It became, ‘Oh, they’re cued into the characters.’ And that’s when I knew we had something.”
