Ray Romano never wanted his hit sitcom to be named after him.
Everybody Loves Raymond ran for nine seasons from 1996 to 2005. The name came from Romano’s real life as his brother was a police officer in New York City and would constantly complain about how he was “shot at” without anyone batting an eye, but when his brother went to work, “Everybody loves Raymond.”
On Monday, in a Paley Museum event in New York City celebrating 30 years since the sitcom’s debut, Romano said how much he hated the name of the show at the beginning, going as far as begging the head of CBS to change it.
“The line ‘everybody loves Raymond’ was in the pilot script, and Phil said, ‘I'm going to use it as a title,’” Romano said, referring to the series’ co-creator and executive producer, Phil Rosenthal.
“And I said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ I was a comic. I was self-deprecating. I can’t have that as a title. It’s just opening yourself up to get attacked.”
Rosenthal told him it was a “working title” that could be changed, until CBS ended up loving it.
“I begged the head of CBS,” Romano said. “I said, ‘Please, I can't, I'm gonna have to live with that.’”
The Ice Age actor said he jokingly told the network head that the show would go on to be a “top 10 hit,” so he didn’t want the title to be attached to him for the rest of his life.
“And he said to me, ‘If it's a top 10 hit, you can name it whatever you want,’” Romano continued. The network then asked Romano to provide alternative names to test market them to determine which would perform the best.
The list that Romano came up with is part of an exhibit in the Paley Museum.
Other possible titles for the sitcom included, Guy named Raymond, That Raymond Guy, Nice being Raymond, and Ummm Raymond.
Despite the show’s eventual success, one of Everybody Loves Raymond’s main cast members, Brad Garrett, has said the main reason the show could never return is due to the deaths of Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, who played Romano’s parents in the series.
Roberts died aged 90 in 2016, while Boyle died in 2006, shortly after the show ended. Roberts won four Emmys for her performance as the feisty matriarch, Marie.
“There is no show without the parents,” Garrett told People while attending the premiere of his new film, Disney Pixar’s Elio. “They were the catalyst, and to do anything that would resemble that wouldn’t be right to the audiences or to the loyal fan base. And it was about those two families, and you can’t get around that.”
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