Rich Cohen: Last News

Ray Romano feels “blessed” that his relationship with Martin Scorsese began by the famed director having no idea who he was, despite having been the star of the wildly successful “Everybody Loves Raymond”.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Ray Romano starred in one of television’s biggest sitcoms for 9 seasons and 210 episodes, but apparently Martin Scorsese was never watching “Everybody Loves Raymond.” During a recent interview on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast (via IndieWire), Raymond said that Scorsese had no idea who he was when casting him in the HBO series “Vinyl.” “Scorsese did the pilot and I had to go on tape for him,” Romano said. “The cool thing was, I went on tape and the response we got back was, ‘Yeah, Marty likes it. He’s in the running. And Marty wants to know who he is. He’s never seen him,’ And my agent was like, ‘So he’s never seen the show?’ And they go, ‘No, no, no, he doesn’t know who the guy is,’ which was a blessing because he didn’t have to erase the sitcom character from his mind.”