Parade Magazine 

When it comes to the hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, which just began its sixth season, co-star Patricia Heaton says, "I’m for going on indefinitely."

"I love this show, the people, the writing, the work schedule," Heaton, who plays Ray’s wife Debra, tells PARADE magazine for this Sunday’s issue. "I could do it for another five years, as long as it’s good and there are stories to tell."

Heaton says there is no shortage of good stories. "What happnes (in real life) to the members of the cast and the writers are the stuff of this show," she explains. "The chat around the water cooler can work its way into the script. During the last hiatus, I was in Canada, away from my kids, making a movie and saying, ‘Yahoo! No kids for six weeks!’ And I caught myself feeling guilty, and I said, ‘Why don’t we do a story about Debra feeling guilty about leaving the children at home?’"

Regarding the show’s star, Ray Romano, Heaton says, "He’s a good guy. But don’t tell him I said that. I give him as much grief as possible, but what it comes down to is that he and Phil Rosenthal (series creator and executive producer) are a couple of geniuses."

Before hitting it big in California, Heaton lived in New York. "After nine years of very little success, I was so beaten down, I left for L.A." Today, she maintains a house there and another in England with her husband, British actor David Hunt, and their four sons.

On September 11, Heaton and the rest of the cast were in New York to promote a new syndication deal. "We were headed to do the Rosie O’Donnell Show when the first plane hit," she recalls. "When they told us about the other plane, we turned and went back to the hotel. We gathered in (producer) Phil Rosenthal’s room to watch TV. We watched for hours. My husband was there, but the kids were in L.A., and we wanted to get back to them." They all finally made it home by the end of the week using buses and chartered planes.