Photo credits: Bruce Stotesbury, Times Colonist.

<< back                                            August 22, 2005
Victoria Times Colonist
Author:: Michael D. Reid

Sure, Everybody Loves Raymond, but Patricia Heaton is enjoying life after playing his wife on the popular TV sitcom.

When Patricia Heaton taped the final episode of Everybody Loves Raymond last May, she burst into tears.

The striking brunette actress who had earned six Emmy nominations and two consecutive wins for playing Debra Barone, the sarcastic, long-suffering wife of Ray Romano's title character, jokes about being such a "crybaby" to this day.

Still, some wondered how easy it would be for the tightly-knit cast to get over the demise of the hit CBS sitcom after nine seasons.

Any such concerns are dashed on a hot August afternoon as Heaton laughs and chats on the set of another project -- The Engagement Ring -- while strolling through the gorgeous, sun-kissed back garden of a grand stone home in Oak Bay.

The picturesque location for Turner Entertainment Television's romantic comedy-drama is worlds away from the TV studio where she taped the 210th episode of Everybody Loves Raymond before a studio audience just three months ago.

While Leslie Moonves, co-chief operating officer of Viacom and chairman of CBS, and some industry analysts were convinced the show that became a surprise hit in 1996 could make it to a 10th season, she says Romano and series creator Phil Rosenthal felt it was important that Everybody Loves Raymond fade to black while it was still ahead.

"I think everybody felt it was time to go and I certainly think it was the right time," says Heaton, casually clad in a pastel pink floral blouse and hot-pink slacks. "I cried my eyes out but I was fine and I haven't looked back."

She says while a made-for-TV movie is "a very different animal," filming it is in some ways similar to a sitcom.

"Raymond was amazing training," she explains after patiently redoing takes of a "walk and talk" scene with Tony Lo Bianco (The French Connection), the veteran actor who plays Nick Di Cenzo, the stubborn owner of a Napa Valley vineyard.

Today's delays are caused by late afternoon lighting issues and ill-timed noise from Vancouver-bound seaplanes, prompting Emmy-winning director Steven Schachter -- his beloved bulldog Dyson by his side -- to remark: "Oh, boy, it's rush hour."

Another similarity between doing a sitcom and a TV movie, adds Heaton, is you have to work fast.

"This is also a comedy where you tweak the lines a little as you go and come up with new stuff which we also had to do a lot on Raymond," the vivacious actress and co-executive producer explains.

In The Engagement Ring, Heaton plays Sara, a woman who receives an engagement ring that has been lost in the mail for years. Nick had sent the ring to Sara's mother (Lainie Kazan) decades ago, but she never received it. Bitterness ensued.

Scripted by Frank Denson and Rodney Vaccaro (Three to Tango), the film also stars Vincent Spano (Baby It's You) and Chuck Shamata. It's being produced by Vancouver's Ted Bauman in association with Magna Global Entertainment and FourBoys Films, the production company named after Heaton's four boys aged 6, 8, 10 and 12 she formed with her husband, British actor David Hunt.

Heaton, 47, says it was her love of comedy and the script that attracted her.

"I read the script and absolutely fell in love with it," she exclaims, adding with a laugh: "Actually, I saw that it was set in Napa and I said, 'I don't care what it's about. I'll do it because I'll be hanging out in vineyards and riding horses."

She describes it as a perfect first outing for FourBoys Films. Through her company, Heaton inked a deal earlier this year with ABC and Touchstone Television to star in and produce film and TV projects.

"It just has this Moonstruck quality and it's so charming," she adds, smiling warmly.

"It poses the question 'What is true love?' It's about taking a leap of faith and commitment and having family history and the importance of roots."

The Engagement Ring is one of several projects Heaton has in the works. Shortly after filming wraps here, she's off to Toronto to play the U.S. ambassador to Yemen opposite Harvey Keitel in a six-hour ABC mini-series based on the 9/11 Commission report, and she's exploring opportunities for a new sitcom as part of her ABC deal.

Why would Heaton want to do another sitcom so soon after Raymond?

The devoted mother and author of the best-seller Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine -- admits her reasons are selfish. She wants to spend as much time as she can with her children.

"I find doing this much more difficult because the hours are very long -- a minimum of 12 hours a day," she says of shooting on-location. "With Raymond we'd go in at 10 and finish at 4 -- four days a week, three weeks a month."

On this day, she's beside herself with glee because her kids are flying up to spend a week with her. It beats trying to troubleshoot over a cellphone from a movie set as she found herself doing the other day while getting lined up for a shot.

One of her sons, distressed about having to go to computer camp, was on the line.

Her anxiety didn't go unnoticed by her director, who came over to chat after a bland take.

"He said, 'You know, I wasn't really getting that there was fun in that take,' and I said, 'It's probably because the subtext was that I've just paid hundreds of dollars for a computer camp that my kid hates."

Crediting "a husband who is willing to pitch in," and her personal assistant and nanny with helping her juggle career and family, she says it's such a challenge she wonders how other actors do it.

"The schedule of a sitcom is so great for families -- moms especially," she says.

These days Heaton is in talks with The Engagement Ring's Vaccaro about a possible collaboration on a television project based on a book she optioned. It's Enslaved by Ducks, Bob Tarte's droll memoir about a city slicker who finds himself living with a menagerie of parrots, ducks, rabbits and more when he moves to rural Michigan and marries an animal lover.

She also co-produced The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania, an upcoming documentary feature directed by Hunt about a beauty pageant in a coal mining community.

"It's an homage to small-town America and a way of life that is fast disappearing," she says.

No matter where she goes from here, Heaton says she'll always cherish Everybody Loves Raymond.

"It was based on genuine people," she says. "It wasn't cliched sitcom characters that you plug in -- the best friend, the upstairs neighbour, or whatever. It was based on Ray's and Phil's real families so the characters were very three dimensional."

Heaton says she couldn't escape the sitcom even if she wanted to. The other day she found herself laughing out loud after channel surfing into a rerun of an early episode she can barely remember doing.

"We did 210 of those, so it was like watching it for the first time for me," she said.

The actress doesn't have a problem with fans who keep asking her about Everybody Loves Raymond.

"I'm going to worry when they don't bring it up," she says, laughing.