The Brother
Ray’s real brother, Richard the police sergeant, is shorter than Ray, so naturally we started looking for a shorter fellow to play Robert—the older brother who would literally have to look up to Raymond. And then this talking tree came into the casting office. His name was Brad Garrett, and when he walked in I thought, Well...here’s another way to go....When he opened his mouth, and those basso profundo notes came out with brilliant timing, matchless facial expression, and expert delivery, I fell over laughing. This was nothing like Ray’s or my life; it was better. That was easy. We found the brother.

The Father
The network approved Brad right away, but we started hearing about how we shouldn’t go too ethnic with the cast. What does that mean? It means that for this show to play in Middle America, we couldn’t have too many overtly swarthy Italian or Jewish types populating this family. Ray and Brad are both, and respectively, swarthy, Italian, and Jewish.

I asked, “It’s an Italian family. What are we supposed to cast?” Network Guy says, “Nonethnic ethnic.”

This was a new concept to me. But I soon realized what they meant because Les Moonves provided the perfect example of the nonethnic ethnic when he suggested Peter Boyle for the role of Frank Barone. Peter Boyle says New York ethnic without saying Italian or Jewish. Peter Boyle is decidedly Irish, which I’ve come to understand means nonethnic ethnic. We’ve come a long way.

Peter Boyle showed up for our meeting an hour late. He got bad directions on the lot and was sent on a wild goose chase on a very hot day trying to find us. When he finally did, he was pissed off. Now, I only know this man from seeing him in Young Frankenstein and, worse, Joe. Joe shot punks like me for fun, and here he comes into the room, angry at me. At that moment, he wasn’t a movie star to me, he was a big, angry movie star. He scared me, and I gave him the part.

He happened to be funny, too, when he calmed down. But we also saw that we could use a little of that anger. The truth is, Peter is a sweetheart, a liberal, and has led one of the more interesting lives on the planet. Here are two things I was stunned to learn: He had been a monk, and John Lennon was the best man at Peter’s wedding. Lucky for us, he also was hilarious at sitting in a chair with his pants open and rifling off one-liners at his wife, his sons, and anyone else in range. We had the father.

The Mother
I saw more than a hundred women for this role in New York and Los Angeles. It was very tough for me to cast, because I had someone very specific in mind for this mother...my mother. And she was too ethnic.

Doris Roberts came into the room, a fifty-year veteran of stage and screen, read the Fruit-of-the-Month scene, and was perfect. She doesn’t look anything like my mother, but she just totally got what was in my head and in my life. She also has perfect timing, delivery, and facial expression. There was no runner-up. It seemed as if she was born to do this role. I was starting to feel lucky. It was starting to look a lot like a show.

The Wife
The wife in a sitcom is the hardest part to cast. She can’t just be the straight man or the nice lady who says, “Here’s your lunch, honey.” She has to be all things to all people: funny, tough, sexy, sweet, vulnerable, confident, charming. I’m lucky because I found her in real life, too.

I didn’t marry that girl...

But I know where she is.

Wife joke. Half the jokes on Raymond were wife jokes. The other half were husband jokes.

The week we start casting, I get a call from Network Guy, who asks me, “Who are you casting for the wife?” I say, “Honestly, I’m looking now. I’m looking all over the place.” (I think ultimately I saw two hundred women for that part in New York and LA, flying back and forth.) He says, “Well, Les Moonves wants this one actress [we’ll call her So-and-So]. So you should cast her.” I say, “Oh, but I think she’s completely wrong.” He says, “You didn’t hear me. Les wants her. If you don’t cast her, you don’t have a show.” End of discussion. This is exactly what I had been waiting for—the end of my luck.

I call my agent, and I say, “Can you believe this? They’re making me take this actress....This So-and-So is horrible for the part. She’s won’t be funny in this. They only want her because she’s a blonde. She’s wispy. She’s waspy. She’s totally, completely wrong for the show and will ruin the whole thing. What do I do?” And my agent says, “I would cast her.”

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