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"Everybody Loves Me!"
RD: Welcome to Mooseport -- what made you pick that script?Romano: It wasn't a super stretch, but it was different, quirky. A light comedy, a little romance, small-town charm. I don't want to play the guy I'm playing on TV, because people can see that every week, but then again you also don't want to shock your audience and play something like "Natural Born Killers."
RD: You have a serious passion for golf. Help me out -- I don't get it.
Romano: I love what I hate about it. I mean, first of all it's the great equalizer. I don't care who you are. Look at me: I got a show that's titled, "Everybody loves me!" You get on that golf course ... and too bad, you're never going to master it. I could beat a Super Bowl MVP on a golf course on any given day -- and then a ten-year-old kid with a lisp could beat me.
RD: That's true of any sport, why --
Romano: It's not true of any sport. I could never get in a baseball game and hit a Nolan Ryan fastball. I couldn't. But with golf, it's such a game of inches that if I was playing Tiger Woods, I could conceivably beat him on a couple holes. It brings out in me curses I've never said before, and it also brings this ...
RD: Gets you high.
Romano: It could make me high, it could. I forget the word -- it's cathartic, when it's going well.
RD: When you started out, did you think you would be this successful, that you'd become a household word?
Romano: No, of course not. I still don't. I mean, when I started doing stand-up, the goal wasn't to get a TV show; the goal was to be a stand-up.
RD: How did you come up with the title "Everybody Loves Raymond"?
Romano: Are you being facetious?
RD: No.
Romano: Believe me, I didn't come up with it. My brother used to say it very sarcastically, very sar-doan-ically, is that right? He would say, "Oh, look at Raymond. Raymond goes onstage. I have to chase criminals for a living, people with guns, and the public hates me. But look what Raymond does. Everybody loves Raymond."
RD: How did it end up as the name?
Romano: We used it as a working title. But when CBS wanted to use it for the show, I fought it hard. I even pleaded with Les Moonves, the head of CBS, "Please, that can't be the name!"
RD: And what did CBS say?
Romano: They said, "It tested well." I was desperate and came up with like six different possibilities. In my dressing room they've framed them. They're just ridiculous. "That Raymond Guy." "Raymond's Family." "Um, Raymond." That was my favorite. And of course, CBS tested them and "Everybody Loves Raymond" tested better.
RD: Why did it bother you so much?
Romano: First of all, when you're a comic, your esteem is very low and you don't want to go out there with a show saying, "Everybody loves me!" It's just going to breed contempt.
RD: So are you at peace with it now?
Romano: Yeah. The show takes on its own identity, you know what I mean? It's a good problem to have, I guess, where you live with everybody making wordplay on the title. Because, you know, if my movie comes out, some critic is going to write, "Well, I don't know who these people are that love Raymond, but not the moviegoers." I guess there are worse problems, right?
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