Ray Romano wasn’t insulted that Martin Martin Scorsese had never heard of him before auditioning for HBO’s Vinyl in 2016.
In fact, the 65-year-old Everybody Loves Raymond actor says he was grateful and “blessed.”
“Scorsese did the pilot and I had to go on tape for him,” Ray recalled.
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“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,’” Ray recounted on a recent episode of the WTF podcast. “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.”
Ray Romano portrayed Ray Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond for nine seasons from 1996 to 2005. He received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2002. Everybody Loves Raymond was nominated for 69 Primetime Emmy Awards.
“I can buy that, that Martin Scorsese doesn’t watch television. So when he hired me, he liked what he saw,” Ray continued.
Although Vinyl was cancelled after one season, Ray appeared in Martin Scorsese‘s 2019 Netflix mob drama The Irishman.
Ray just made his feature film debut as director in the comedy Somewhere in Queens, which was released in theaters on April 21, 2023.
Ray also revealed on the podcast that he had a heart stent installed after doctors found a 90 percent blockage in a major artery.
