{"id":152456,"date":"2025-11-25T06:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T06:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152456\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T06:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T06:33:07","slug":"everybody-loves-raymond-reunion-the-best-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152456\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Everybody Loves Raymond\u2019 Reunion: The Best Moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe cast and creator of Everybody Loves Raymond<\/a> reunited in a CBS special Monday, and while there were certainly some physical indications of the passage of time \u2014 Madylin and Sullivan Sweeten, who played two of the three kids on the show, are in their 30s now \u2014\u00a0it was otherwise as if they picked up right where they left off.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn front of a live audience and on a set re-creating the Barone family\u2019s living room and kitchen \u2014\u00a0and with a suitcase still on the staircase landing \u2014\u00a0series creator Phil Rosenthal<\/a> and star Ray Romano<\/a> reminisced with co-stars Patricia Heaton<\/a>, Brad Garrett<\/a>, Monica Horan (she and Rosenthal are married in real life) and Madilyn and Sullivan Sweeten. (CBS billed the reunion as a 30th anniversary, but it\u2019s a little early: Everybody Loves Raymond premiered in September 1996.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cast and Rosenthal also paid tribute to their late co-stars Peter Boyle, Doris Roberts and Sawyer Sweeten, showed outtakes and reminisced about their nine years on the Emmy-winning series. Here are some of the best moments from the 90-minute special.<\/p>\n

\n\tRaymond is global: The series has aired around the world in syndication and spawned a number of local remakes (including one in Russia, the subject of Rosenthal\u2019s 2010 documentary Exporting Raymond. A woman in the audience told Romano that she watched the show growing up in the Philippines and that it helped her learn English.<\/p>\n

\n\tUpon hearing that, Rosenthal asked, \u201cYou learned how to speak English from Ray Romano? So were your first English words \u2018Ohhh noooo!\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere will be no sequels: Just a few minutes into the show, Romano laid out the terms of the special: \u201cLet\u2019s get one thing out of the way \u2014\u00a0this is a reunion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot a reboot,\u201d Rosenthal added.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re never going to do one, because we\u2019re missing three castmembers, three family members,\u201d Romano continued, as photos of Boyle, Roberts and Sawyer Sweeten showed on screen. \u201cWe\u2019d never try to do the show without them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be the same,\u201d Rosenthal agreed. \u201cWe have too much respect for the show itself and for the beautiful audience. \u2026 And thankfully, the show is still on every day, all over the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe origin story: Romano asked Rosenthal how they met, to which he replied, \u201cI was in bed\u201d \u2014\u00a0watching Romano do stand-up on The Late Show With David Letterman. Right after that May 1995 appearance on Letterman\u2019s show, as Letterman tells it in a pre-taped clip, his production company, Worldwide Pants, signed Romano to a deal to develop a sitcom. Rosenthal was hired to write it, and the two met at Art\u2019s Deli in the San Fernando Valley to get to know one another.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey hit it off (obviously), and in discussing their lives they discovered not only the premise for the show \u2014\u00a0which mirrored Romano\u2019s own life \u2014\u00a0but also that their stories about their parents had a lot in common. That led to Rosenthal\u2019s guiding principle of keeping regular hours with his writers so they could have lives outside the show, and thus bring stories from those lives back into the writers\u2019 room.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNinety percent of everything you saw on the show happened to me, or to Ray, or to one of the other writers,\u201d Rosenthal said, noting that the show\u2019s pilot episode story about Ray giving his parents a Fruit of the Month Club gift came from his own life. \u201cWhat I didn\u2019t realize, and what I learned from us doing that [was], \u2018Oh, wait \u2014\u00a0your parents are all crazy too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRomano\u2019s kids do great impressions of him: It\u2019s hard to convey in print, but go to the nine-minute mark of the special for some good bits from his daughter, Ally, and sons Matthew, Gregory and Joseph.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody\u2019s favorite episodes: Romano said he has a top five list but singled out \u201cTalk to Your Daughter\u201d from season six. He prepares to have The Talk with Ally (Madylin Sweeten), but rather than asking about sex, she has existential questions for which Ray is entirely unprepared.<\/p>\n

\n\tHeaton\u2019s favorite is season seven\u2019s \u201cBaggage,\u201d one of the more famous episodes in the show\u2019s run. Debra and Ray have a standoff about who will finish taking their suitcase upstairs after a weekend trip, leading to one of the series\u2019 best pieces of physical comedy as they then end up fighting over who will do the task. <\/p>\n

\n\tGarrett chose \u201cLucky Suit,\u201d also from season six, in which Robert\u2019s job interview at the FBI goes sideways when the agent in charge reads him a letter that Marie (Roberts) faxed to the bureau explaining she ruined his lucky suit.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Horan, it\u2019s \u201cPat\u2019s Secret,\u201d the next-to-last episode of the series in which Amy\u2019s mother, Pat (Georgia Engel), is revealed to be a secret smoker \u2014 leading to confessions from several other members of the extended family. <\/p>\n

\n\tMadylin Sweeten picked another season six episode, \u201cMarie\u2019s Scuplture,\u201d in which Marie crafts a statue that everyone but she notices looks like a vagina. Sullivan Sweeten said his favorite is the series finale, and specifically the final scene where the entire family gathers at Ray and Debra\u2019s kitchen table for the last time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cast and creator of Everybody Loves Raymond reunited in a CBS special Monday, and while there were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[48487,156,48482,111,139,69,48486,48491,48485,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-152456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-brad-garrett","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-everybody-loves-raymond","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-patricia-heaton","15":"tag-phil-rosenthal","16":"tag-ray-romano","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}