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Crazy-Making Situation
It's a life most men would find tough to handle: three kids, including a set of twins, a wife who's about a thousand times smarter than you are, and your big-mouth, busybody mother living across the street. Makes you tired just thinking about it, huh?Yet out of this crazy-making situation, actor Ray Romano has spun one of the funniest shows on television. As almost everyone with a TV set and a pulse knows, "Everybody Loves Raymond," Romano's Top 10 hit, is so piercingly, hilariously real mostly because it's so close to Romano's everyday life. Until "Raymond" hit it big, he lived in Queens with his wife, Anna, three children (a fourth born in 1998), and his parents were just blocks away (not across the street).
Now Romano, 46, is breaking out of his life-imitates-art approach to comedy, and starring in his first big-budget film, Welcome to Mooseport, in theaters this month. He's also wrestling with one of those thorny 40-something questions: What am I doing with my life? "Everybody Loves Raymond" has been a CBS hit for the greater part of a decade, and earns Romano a reported $1.8 million per episode. But it also sucks up almost all of his time -- leaving him little to spend with his family or play golf.
Of course, Romano is different from the rest of us -- he could quit today, cash his TV paycheck and never work again. But when he says it's not about money, it's about whether to keep doing a hit show or quit at your peak, and still have time for family, you believe the guy. When he sat down with writer Sara Davidson late last year, he was in a philosophical mood after Halloweening with his twins, Matthew and Gregory, who went as characters from Willy Wonka.
RD: Does your wife think you're funny?
Romano: Not at the moment! Not now that she had to dress two Oompa Loompa men while I was on the treadmill. Right now life is very stressful. With four kids and the show, I'm never home. But she married me, and we're together, so she must have thought I was funny. Because she didn't think I was sexy, that's for sure.
RD: What makes it work?
Romano: One of the great things about our relationship is I love to make her laugh, because she won't laugh unless something is funny. You know in this business people laugh and "yes" you just to kiss up, but when I make her laugh, I know it's real and it's just one of those good feelings.
RD: Comics usually come from funny families. Were your parents funny?
Romano: My mother is a piano teacher -- a Juilliard graduate -- so there's a creative gene there, I guess. My father is very dry, very undemonstrative. He's kind of a -- here's one word, I hope I say it right -- misanthrope? Is that right? But he can be wacky, not wacky funny but bizarre, kind of quirky funny. I'm learning this now as an adult, 'cause when we were kids, he wasn't funny to me at all. I used to say that if my father had hugged me once, I would be an accountant, I wouldn't need to do comedy. He loved us, but couldn't show affection in any way.
RD: Please explain "bizarre, kind of quirky funny."
Romano: We put this in our pilot episode for the show: My dad learned the code to my home answering machine, how to play back the messages. He would call our house, play them back, hear the message, and then he would call up and leave a message. "Raymond, tell Anna that Linda called, she went to the gyno, blah, blah, blah." I thought it was just my dad being stupid, but my wife would freak out.
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