Doug Hefferman’s eyes will be weary and back tight no more, as Kevin James has confirmed that The King of Queens is missing too crucial of an element to warrant a return to living rooms.
While plenty of shows have made their return to television and there’s a mixed bag of anticipation coming with some, a number of comedians downright refuse to take part in the nostalgia wave. For Kevin James, bringing back The King of Queens just wouldn’t work if Jerry Stiller – who played Doug’s father-in-law and who passed away in 2020 – couldn’t be involved. As he told Collider, “To go back and to redo it, I just don’t think, because we don’t have Jerry. Again, A.I., if they do everybody, and there’s something where they can do you at any age…I would never say no, but it feels hard because for me, he was such a part of it, man. He was the glue in that thing. I don’t know. I just can’t even picture it. I don’t know. It’s just a weird way to do it. Why? Why would you do that if you don’t have him?”
The King of Queens may have been on the air for nine seasons and 200+ episodes, but Kevin James knows that he was still failing to compete with other prime time sitcoms. “I wouldn’t say that it’s perfect. It was a moment in time, I think. The King of Queens is weird because we weren’t as popular. When we came out, we did okay. We did good. But it was [Everybody Loves] Raymond and Friends and all these other office comedies and funnier shows, and they did much better than us. What blows me away is how well we’ve done when we’ve come out later in syndication. I don’t know whether it’s because they just pummeled people with it, and it got into their brains that way, but people now enjoy it, I feel like, more than ever.”
For comparison’s sake, Friends amassed more than 60 Primetime Emmy nominations during its run, while Everybody Loves Raymond stands as one of the most nominated ever, in the neighborhood of 70. The King of Queens, on the other hand, only ever got one: Kevin James for a season eight episode. Where The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond stand united, however, is that the unwillingness for a revival comes down to the shows missing so much without the parents.