Ray Romano Is Embracing His Dark Side: “I Feel Very Raw”

When Ray Romano finished his near-decade-long run on Everybody Loves Raymond, he felt hungry for a new challenge. He started saying no to sitcom offers, developed his own well-regarded but short-lived drama, Men of a Certain Age, and put himself out there by directly asking for a dramatic role on Jason Katims ’s Parenthood. (He wound up starring in the NBC hit’s final three seasons.) “When you’re coming off of nine years of a sitcom, you’ve got to take baby steps,” Romano says. “The audience doesn’t see you in that light.”

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He’s put in a lot of work since those early breakthroughs—see his terrific supporting work in everything from The Big Sick to Bad Education and The Irishman —but still, viewers may not be primed for just how dark Romano goes in No Good Deed (streaming December 12), the latest genre-busting Netflix series from Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman. This half-hour show veers from broad comedy to wrenching drama, following various couples whose fates converge at an open house in a leafy Los Angeles neighborhood—to both emotional and shocking ends.

Romano and another sitcom legend, Lisa Kudrow, anchor the swirling action as the home’s owners, Paul and Lydia, whose motivation to sell comes into clearer view with each episode. The spouses carry secrets, resentments, debts, and petty feuds that start to overwhelm them, allowing the two Emmy winners to hit some pleasingly familiar comic notes—but also far more complex ones of desperation, grief, and regret. As Romano says, he’s developed ways to go to those kinds of places as an actor over the years. He’s still learning on the fly, though—and has some big ideas for where he’d like to go next.

Vanity Fair: This is new territory for you as an actor. What did you make of Liz Feldman approaching you for No Good Deed ?

Ray Romano: I can’t remember if she said why, and I would never ask—I don’t think I would risk asking her that. [ Laughs ] But I do believe she told me she had me in mind right from the get go. It’s labeled as a dark comedy, and that’s true, but I kind of feel like it’s a dark dramedy if you’re going to be really specific. There is a caricature to some of the people and some of the humor, but it’s all still grounded. And if I have to go out on a limb and say something nice about my stupid self, I think what she saw in me was that that’s kind of my wheelhouse. I like comedy, and if it’s big, it’s big. But I always want it to feel grounded in some type of reality. That’s the way this show goes.

There’s a darkness to your performance too. Paul is haunted, but we don’t exactly know why until the end of the season. How did you approach those scenes, teasing out what’s going on inside of the character while not giving it away?

There’s a whodunit aspect to it, there’s a mystery. I just played it the only way I knew how. And for that I needed to know—because there was a mystery to us, also. Not all the episodes were written, and we weren’t given them all. Myself and Lisa, we needed to know: What are we playing here? What really has happened? Liz knew as an actor that we needed to know, and she did tell us. I took all the information I had on that character, and I did what I always do: I made up a whole little backstory for him, with the house and with his brother. I just put that in my own head and that stays in the back. You write it, you read it, and then you put it away.

When did you start writing those backstories for your characters?

Well, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m this big actor-y guy. [ Laughs ] But I do remember Denzel Washington saying it in an interview. I think the first time I ever did it was the first thing I did after Everybody Loves Raymond , of any substance: Parenthood . It really helps me, even if I’m making up stuff that the creator and the writer maybe didn’t even intend—it just fills up the blanks. I’ve been doing it ever since. This is weird to say, but writing, I’m sure you know, it’s torture. I get excited: “Oh, I got a new gig!” And then I think, “Oh, I’ve got to write three, four pages of a backstory on that.”

Did you do that for The Irishman ?

Yes, I did. That was based on an actual guy, so it was a little different, but I took what I knew and everything I could find about him and I filled in the blanks. So it’s a little different from making stuff up out through the deep canyons in my stupid head.

I am curious how that informs the work on a show like this, where the material is heavy—you go to some pretty dark emotional places—and you’re also working opposite another beloved comic actor in Lisa Kudrow.

I’m of course intimidated before I meet anybody who I’m going to be working with. And Lisa was on this iconic show that actually filmed two stages down from us [on Everybody Loves Raymond ]. I knew for seven years the Beatles were over there. When I told her, I said, “How funny that we were two stages apart back then. And she goes, “We were?” She never even knew. [ Laughs ] But she redeemed herself by telling me that she watched every episode of my show during the pandemic. I thought, “Oh, now you’re just trying to make up,” but I was wrong because she would quote episodes to me while we were filming. So we were mutual fans of each other.

We bonded over our securities. We were both kind of questioning, Is this right? Are we doing this? What do you think’s going on here? But it felt very organic. I was really blown away by her performance.

You mentioned insecurity. Did the emotional stuff intimidate you?

Oh yeah. The first time I ever had to go deep—and actually, the scene called for me to break down—was during Vinyl . My character contemplates killing himself in the car. I remember calling my agent and saying, “I don’t know if I can do this.” And my agent being very sensitive said to me, and I’m quoting, said, “You better do it.” And in Parenthood there were moments that were new to me, let’s put it that way, coming from Everybody Loves Raymond . We had moments of poignancy, but nothing heavy like this. So that was the first step, and I thought I got there partially, at least—not as full as I wanted. In Vinyl , I remember telling my daughter the night before, “I need a playlist of sad music that I can prep myself with.” She put together a playlist for me. I put these headphones on five minutes before the scene, and I got myself in the mode. Then you conjure up emotional things in your life that can get you there. I felt like I got within this bubble and I tried to [stay] there. When the director yelled action, it felt like it worked—like a little revelation of, “Oh wow, this is like another level I can get to emotionally.”

That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Whenever there’s a heavy scene like that, even if it doesn’t call for tears, I still want to get to tears before the scene starts because I feel very raw and where I need to be. I keep having to update my playlist, and I’m running out of songs, but right now it’s “Fix You” by Coldplay. I also feel like—and I know this is not true for other actors—but the older I get, the easier it is to tap into emotion. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve lived more life and I’ve experienced more ups and downs. I see many young actors who can tear your heart out in a scene, but I don’t think I was capable of that during the Everybody Loves Raymond days. I’ve grown as a person and as an actor.

I read that you’d emailed Jason Katims directly for that Parenthood part, since you weren’t seen as a dramatic actor at all back then—you had to go after it. Are there other post- Raymond jobs that you put yourself out there for?

There are a couple of people where I’ve seen their work and said to my agent, “Oh my God, I would love to do something with him.” He throws in a phone call for me. I don’t think it’s worked. [ Laughs ] I think Jason Katims was the only one where it worked. But I don’t do it a lot. If something blows me away and I think there’s an outside chance that there’s something for me, I’ll tell my agent to just mention my name. I’ve done it two or three times, but nothing has materialized from it. They’re very nice to me in saying if anything comes up, that kind of stuff.

Has anybody blown you away recently that you want to contact?

There are. Oh, I’ll tell you who—I just saw the movie. I’m going to say the name wrong. Anna Nora. Anna Nora ?

Anora ?

Anora . Have you seen it?

I have. You would be excellent in a Sean Baker movie.

Yeah, that guy’s got something there. And I thought, “Wow, it’d be cool to work with something he does.” So put in a word for me.

You got it. I know you’ve been working on developing some projects too. What’s the status of the biopic of basketball coach Jim Valvano you were attached to?

I’m very invested in it. This is something we tried to get done 10 years ago, and I don’t know what happened. There were complications with getting the rights or getting the family on board. About two years ago, my agent was talking to another producer and he brought it up again, and he spoke to the family. They were interested, and we met over Zoom. They were all for it. Then we found a script writer and we have a script—we actually have a director, and now they’re just going out and trying to find a studio or some of the financing. I’m like, “Let’s get going, because I’m not getting younger.”

The documentary Survive in Advance —it’s my favorite sports documentary of all time. It kills me every time I see it. His story is so great, and he’s from Queens, New York. He’s Italian. He didn’t go into stand-up comedy, but it looks like he could have been. He is so inspiring. I just am crossing my fingers. I guess with AI now and all that, they can do stuff. But I’m getting older. I’m aging myself out of this. So I hope it gets going pretty soon.

On the reverse, what are you passing on these days? This is your first lead TV role in quite some time.

The only thing I pass on, really, is when half-hour comedies come up. And this is not the sole lead, either. This is an ensemble, and I’ve been in ensembles: Get Shorty, Made for Love . They didn’t have a long stay, so now people may not even realize I was on those, but otherwise, yes, I’ve been offered a couple things. But if it’s a half-hour comedy, it’s going to be very hard for me to say yes. Especially if it’s a multi-cam. I’m not going to want to follow Everybody Loves Raymond . I want to leave that as my multi-cam legacy. And with a half-hour single camera, I’m not against shows like The Office or whatever coming up—but I’m not throwing my hat into that ring. This is really the best thing that came along.