{"id":398509,"date":"2025-11-23T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/398509\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:00:20","slug":"behind-30th-anniversary-reunion-odd-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/398509\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind 30th Anniversary Reunion Odd Timing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn Nov. 24, CBS will air Everybody Loves Raymond<\/a>: 30th Anniversary Reunion, a 90-minute special celebrating the Emmy-winning comedy series. While reuniting the surviving cast of the show for the first time is great news for fans, its timing is interesting as the special comes a little over 29 years after the multi-camera sitcom starring Ray Romano<\/a> premiered on CBS Sept. 13, 1996. <\/p>\n

\n\tRomano, on whose life and comedy Everybody Loves Raymond was partially based, and series creator Phil Rosenthal<\/a> explained the special\u2019s somewhat odd release date. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was just rounding off,\u201d Romano said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe timing of the special was driven largely by demand after several previous reunion attempts by Rosenthal had failed. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe reason I think they\u2019re doing it now is because they wanted it now,\u201d he said of CBS. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to have a reunion special for 10 years, I was ready to do the 20th anniversary, I was ready to do the 25th anniversary, but there wasn\u2019t an appetite for it at CBS. Amy [Reisenbach], who\u2019s the new president, she was very into it, she\u2019s absolutely lovely and great, and I\u2019m happy to do it. I don\u2019t care when it is. I just selfishly wanted to see my friends and celebrate our nice show.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this year, the Paley Center in New York did an exhibit \u201c30 Years of Everybody Loves Raymond: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute,\u201d which ran June-September. It gave Romano and Rosenthal an idea to try the reunion special again tied to the show\u2019s 30th anniversary, initially in conjunction with the Paley celebration.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe tried to get it together for the when the Paley Center [exhibit] was there, but for technical reasons, we couldn\u2019t,\u201d Romano said. \u201cBut then CBS had an opening for this November week, they said, \u2018You know what, it\u2019d be great to put it on during Thanksgiving week.\u2019 So yeah, technically, it\u2019s a few months earlier for our 30th anniversary, but it is the 30th anniversary of what I did Letterman, which got me the production deal to make the sitcom there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was Romano\u2019s appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in 1995 that prompted Letterman\u2019s production company to sign a sitcom deal with him that led to Everybody Loves Raymond. Rosenthal also saw Romano\u2019s set on the Late Show and was among the writers the comedian met with for the show. The two immediately hit it off, blending their family experiences to craft the fictional Barone family. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI can honestly say that the show was born 30 years ago,\u201d Rosenthal said. \u201cBecause that\u2019s when I met Ray, in 95, and I wrote the pilot in 95 so the show was actually born 30 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCBS Presents EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND: 30TH ANNIVERSARY REUNION<\/a> (L-R): Phil Rosenthal and Ray Romano. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSonja Flemming\/CBS<\/p>\n

\n\tThe October 1 announcement of the the Everybody Loves Raymond reunion special came only two weeks after Romano and co-star Brad Garrett<\/a>\u2018s mini-reunion at the Emmy Awards to present the Outstanding Comedy Series award. Their bit, in which Garrett worried whether he would make the show\u2019s In Memoriam segment<\/a> one day, was one of the night\u2019s highlights and went viral. (You can watch it below.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, talks with CBS for a reunion special were already well underway but did the success of Romano and Garrett\u2019s Emmy appearance help seal the deal?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not sure,\u201d Romano said, explaining that he was approached two or three weeks before the Emmy ceremony to present the top comedy award. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI said, \u2018Well, it\u2019d be good if I did it with Brad. They agreed to that, and then we had to come up with the idea, and we toiled over,\u201d Romano said. \u201cIt\u2019s funny because it looks like it\u2019s just 90 seconds of stuff that we thought of yesterday. And that\u2019s so not the case. For those things when you present, especially for me as a comedian, I have to deliver something funny. It\u2019s fun to do, but it\u2019s so much more work than people think it is. It ended up going well, but that was me and Brad, we wrote it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRomano said that he in not on social media and didn\u2019t know that the video of him and Garrett had gone viral but admitted that \u201cI did get a lot of feedback from it. I did get people telling me that they really liked the little bit we did. It was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion airs Nov. 24 on the series\u2019 signature night, Monday, from 8 to 9:30 p.m. and streaming on Paramount+.<\/p>\n

\n\tHosted by Romano and Rosenthal, the special features appearances by cast members Garrett, Patricia Heaton, Monica Horan, Madylin Sweeten and Sullivan Sweeten. It also pays tribute to late cast members Doris Roberts, Peter Boyle, and Sawyer Sweeten. You can see more photos from the reunion here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Nov. 24, CBS will air Everybody Loves Raymond: 30th Anniversary Reunion, a 90-minute special celebrating the Emmy-winning…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":398510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146406,171,12257,188804,12258,145886,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-398509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-brad-garrett","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-everybody-loves-raymond","11":"tag-everybody-loves-raymond-30th-anniversary-reunion","12":"tag-phil-rosenthal","13":"tag-ray-romano","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115597491358086923","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}