Despite Ray Romano’s massive success, his self-deprecating air isn’t shtick. Really.
Obviously, the actor tells Vanity Fair, he was feeling a little more sure of himself when his long-running sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, was raking in awards, ratings, and cash. ”But I have to say,” he continues, “it’s all relative. The joke I used to say was, ‘Before I used to think my cabdriver hated me, and now I think my limo driver hates me.’ I’m just in a different tax bracket, but what I’m going through internally is still the same. If you put a gun to my head, [I’d say] I’m successful.”
So when Romano says that he identifies with Rick Moreweather, the struggling movie producer he plays in the new EPIX series Get Shorty, you believe him. “He’s a bit of an underdog, a bit of a wannabe, is trying to prove himself. I don’t know if this sounds weird, but I’ve constantly got that going,” he says. “There’s a bit of that guy in me all the time. Whether or not it’s true or not, he’s the guy who doesn’t feel like he’s done what he could do or what he set out to do.”
In the 10-episode dramedy, based loosely on the novel by Elmore Leonard, Rick is persuaded to produce a period movie script brought to him by Miles Daley (Chris O’Dowd), an employee of Nevada-based cartel biggie Amara De Escalones (Lidia Porto) who wants to break out of the doldrums of disposing of bodies. Since Rick can’t get anyone else to return his calls, he eventually takes the project—not bothering to probe too deeply into why he’s getting his financing in cash stuffed in a paper bag.
The series has its light moments, though it’s a bit darker than the 1995 movie version: lots of people get killed, from the innocent to the not-so-innocent. “It’s got a little bit of a Fargo-esque kind of vibe to it,” Romano says. Not only is Rick’s career going down the toilet, but he’s also estranged from his rehab-frequent-flier son—and he has to live in the shadow of his father, who was a director of classic art films that never made money . (That last part is a bit of backstory Romano made up himself, to help him understand his character better.)
Parts that embody this sort of pathos have been par for Romano’s course since Raymond ended in 2005: his first series after the CBS hit was the dramedy Men of a Certain Age, followed closely by a muti-year guest stint on Parenthood as lonely photographer Hank Rizzoli. It culminated with the role of Zak Yankovich, the depressed head of promotions for the fictional record label in Martin Scorsese’s HBO series Vinyl. Currently, he’s winning raves as concerned dad Terry in The Big Sick, summer 2017’s sleeper comedy hit. He’s certainly come a long way from playing a bumbling sitcom dad, and an even longer way from his stand-up career, which took him from delivering futons in Queens to a regular spot with David Letterman (whose studio produced Raymond).
Romano knew pretty soon after Raymond ended that he wanted to do something that challenged him. “When the show ended, I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be nice now after nine years. Kick back. I got money. I have fame. Blah blah blah.’ The bottom fell out after like three months. I realized I need to work. I need to be creative. As much as I have angst and anxiety, when I’m idle, it’s even more. I have to keep moving. Otherwise, I catch up with myself.”
He knew, at least, what he didn’t want to do: “I didn’t want to have to follow Everybody Loves Raymond with another sitcom. Let it be my sitcom legacy, and leave it at that.” And since money was no longer a problem—he was the highest-paid sitcom star on TV by the time Raymond ended, and he also has a piece of the show’s lucrative syndication earnings—Romano could take this opportunity to challenge himself.
So Romano began dipping a toe into more dramatic roles. “I remember I did the movie Eulogy, and there was a dramatic moment in it. It was pretty heavy, and I went for it. It was . . . I didn’t feel that comfortable doing it. And then there was Men of a Certain Age, and there were a couple more heavier moments, and I feel like with each one, I’m able to allow myself to go there. I’m getting more comfortable going to those places now. Doesn’t mean I’m good at it.”
He has a few tactics that help, like that backstory writing trick, which Romano picked up from Denzel Washington. He also has a habit of identifying one key line from each of his characters, then saying that line before each scene he films. “It’s kind of like a reset,” he explains. For Rick, he comes back to this one: “I woulda came to you,” something the character says to a former intern turned studio executive whom he’s trying to curry favor with.
Despite this career pivot, Romano has never left his stand-up roots behind. “I feel like I have honed it for years, and I have figured out how to do stand-up. Acting, I’m still learning. I’m still learning and learning and learning. But I never want to give up stand-up. Because I still get a thrill out of it.” Whenever he’s in New York, like when he shot Vinyl, he’ll perform new material at the Comedy Cellar; like most comedians, he also uses late-night interviews to test-drive jokes in front of a live audience.
If the last time you heard Romano’s stand-up was in the 90s—where he talked about being an overwhelmed dad to young kids—you’ll probably still be familiar with his current routine, even though his kids are all grown up. “Now it’s about being older and not having enough doctor friends,” he says. “It’s a lot about the family and the wife. So far, my boys still live at home. If they move out, it might be hard to come by material.”
Despite all his dramatic work, Romano also mentions that he’s been talking about doing a stand-up special, “because everybody has a special now.” But when it’s suggested that Netflix would snap that up in a millisecond, he just chuckles, unsure he wants to do it in the first place: “Yeah, well . . . we’ll see.”