By Lynette Rice, photography by Gavin Bond | Entertainment Weekly
From Struggling sitcom to comedy Legend, A look Back at Everybody Loves Raymond
Now that the taping of Everybody Loves Raymond’s series finale is only days away, Ray Romano should be using this downtime to pack boxes in his Burbank office. But old habits die hard. Clad in his typical workday ensemble (flannel shirt, blue jeans, gym shoes), Romano is hunched over his laptop computer, scanning the Internet for nit-pickers.
It doesn’t take long to find them; after years of frantic post-episode surfing, Romano knows exactly where to locate Raymond’s harshest critics. (Today, they’re on an entertainment Web page spouting words like mediocre and awful.) “It keeps you humble,” explains the 47-year-old comedian. “People come over to me on the street and are nice, nice, nice. But people who hate you aren’t coming over to say they hate you. The Web is a venue to say it.”