TV INTERVIEW: RAY ROMANO
A Comic 'Of a Certain Age' on the Thin Line Between No-Win and Win-Win
After years of steady rise on the stand-up circuit, Ray Romano achieved incredible success as the star of Everybody Loves Raymond, which came to dominate CBS’s comedy landscape during its 210-episode run from 1996-2005. By 2004, Ray had become the highest paid actor on television, leading the cast of the highest revenue-creating show in TV history. Romano returned to the small screen in 2009, alongside Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher, in Men of a Certain Age, which recently concluded its second season on TNT. Buzzine’s Nicole Rayburn sat down with Ray after the taping of his appearance on The Green Room with Paul Provenza at The Vanguard in Hollywood, California to talk comics, comedy, and the desire to get a laugh…
Nicole Rayburn: So here we are, immediately after you just shot your episode of The Green Room with Paul Provenza with Garry Shandling, Judd Apatow, Marc Maron and Bo Burnham. After having the conversations you just had downstairs, is there anything you learned about those guys that you didn’t know before?
Ray Romano: I knew Shandling was zen-deep like that. The kid [Bo] I’d never met before, so that was cool. Judd and Marc -- I knew them all. I learned a little bit about myself: I’m not as smart as them [laughs], but I knew that going in. I’m a simple smart. There are many levels of not being dumb. I was going to say “genius,” but there are many levels of not being dumb…and I’m almost one of those.
NR: Self-deprecation is a key form of comedy…
RR: When you over-do the self-deprecation, you’re actually being narcissistic… I get it.
NR: You can go there – I can’t. But it is funny.
RR: It’s screwed up either way. It’s a no-win situation. Or a win-win… Sometimes there’s a thin line between a no-win and a win-win. This isn’t making any sense…
NR: It is – I’m just trying to think of an example…
RR: It’s all in how you look at something. It’s all your perspective. I’ve been hanging around Shandling too long. [Laughs – Looks up]… We’re on camera, Tom. These aren’t stills.
NR: That’s okay, Tom: You conduct the interview!
Tom Ayers: No, I don’t want to. He’s saying he’s not smart, right? And then you laughed at that…but Ray has such a street sense that it comes across…
RR: That’s what I’m telling you – there are different levels. There’s an insight and a perception that you can have – it doesn’t mean you’re book-smart. [Laughs]
TA: I just don’t want you to put yourself down, that’s all.
RR: Thanks. It doesn’t mean you have to know big words.
NR: That’s right.
RR: Who the hell is he to come into the middle of an interview?
NR: The audacity!
RR: I mean yeah, he’s trying to help me out, but still. We’re on camera!
NR: It’s cool. I don’t think anyone here thinks that you’re dumb. [Laughs] So we don’t really need the clarification, but it’s cool… is tonight a normal event for you – do you get to hang out with your comic buddies much, or is that mostly at work?
RR: That guy [Tom] is a comic buddy from back in the day. A guy on my new show, Men of a Certain Age, plays my bookie – his name is Jon Manfrellotti. We started out in the Comedy Cellar – he was before me, but this goes back 20 years. I hang out with him all the time. He’s my hiking buddy, my Pilates buddy… yeah, we do Pilates. [Laughs] He’s my football buddy, my gym buddy; he’s also my comrade in self-hate. He’s worse than me. He makes me seem like…I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer here. Jon Manfrellotti was a recurring character on Raymond, and now he’s on the new show. He’s my longtime comic buddy. And then these guys I see once in a while, but not a lot. Judd Apatow and those guys – I go way back, but I don’t see them a lot.
Nicole Rayburn: If you are old friends, there are subtleties to a comic’s responses to other comics, right – the different laughs?
RR: For comedians, when they think it’s funny, there’s the “Ha!”
NR: Is that a compliment?
RR: Yeah. There’s a couple that make no noise at all – just a face. At times, it’s just full laughter – that’s as rare as it gets, for a comedian to laugh easily...
NR: It really takes something to get that reaction…
RR: When it’s your thing and it’s what you do, you kind of analyze…
NR: For a man who likes to analyze…the title of your show was quite a gamble, wasn’t it: How did you know that everyone would love you?
RR: The title was against my will. It’s a true story. It was a working title when we were writing the pilot, and it was a quote from my brother. My brother is a police officer, and he used to say, in real life, “I’ve got to fight criminals. Look what I do for a living. People hate me. But everybody loves Raymond.” So that became a story. Phil Rosenthal, who was creating the show, said, “We’re going to use that as a working title.” I said, “Please no, because they’ll like it.” “No, we’ll change it.” And we couldn’t change it. CBS said, “Yes, we like it.” So now you’re stuck with it, and 15 years later, I knew that kind of title would still get questions. [Laughs]
NR: How did you feel when Paul [Provenza] was like, “Hey, you wanna come have a conversation about comedy on my show?”
RR: It’s two things: 1) You’re flattered to be considered as one of their peers, and 2) it’s a little nerve-wracking because then it’s, “Sh*t. What am I gonna talk about? Am I gonna be funny? Am I gonna be smart?”
NR: When you get that call, do you feel like the pressure is on? Do you feel like you always have to be “on” or is it just, “You know what? I’m just gonna go have a conversation”?
RR: This has nothing to do with Paul Provenza, because he’s a great host, he’s not putting any pressure on you to be funny, but… there’s an audience there. If it was just me and him one-on-one, maybe you let it down a little. But I think now, with a live audience there and other comics there, it’s pretty hard not to squelch that desire to get a laugh. That’s who we are anyway, as comics. So in that situation, with a live audience who wants to laugh – yeah, they like the deep stuff, but I think the majority of the time, they want to laugh. So you’ve got to get it, so there is a little pressure.
Anytime you do anything like that – even this interview. I’m thinking, “I’ve got to say something funny at the end of this long rant,” but I’m not!
This is going to be a good training exercise.
The Second Season of ‘The Green Room with Paul Provenza’ premieres new episodes on Showtime every Thursday night at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT beginning July 14, 2011.
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