Ray Romano says Martin Scorsese had no idea who he was before casting him in the HBO show Vinyl. Romano lived the dream of most stand-up comedians when he landed the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, a showcase for the actor’s deadpan comedic style and Everyman persona. Nine highly-rated Emmy-winning seasons later, Everybody Loves Raymond had set up Romano for a long run as a reliable small-screen comedic presence in shows like Parenthood and Men of a Certain Age, a voice actor in animated franchises like Ice Age and an occasional valuable ing performer in movies like The Big Sick.
The wild success of Everybody Loves Raymond may have helped catapult Romano to sitcom legend status and more, but when it came to impressing legendary director Scorsese, the show didn’t help him one bit. Appearing recently on WTF (via IndieWire), Romano told Marc Maron about the time he auditioned for a role in Scorsese’s ‘70s-set HBO music industry series Vinyl, and learned that Scorsese had never seen his smash hit sitcom, or even heard of him before. Check out what Romano said in the space below:
“Scorsese did the pilot and I had to go on tape for him. 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. … I can buy that, that Martin Scorsese doesn’t watch television. So when he hired me, he liked what he saw.”
Romano’s Vinyl Casting Continued Scorsese’s Habit Of Using Comedic Actors In Unusual Ways
Romano may not have seemed like the obvious choice to play record company promotions man Zak Yankovich in the highly-detailed, period-set HBO prestige drama Vinyl, but in fact, it makes sense that Scorsese would cast him for the role. Indeed, Scorsese has a history of using actors known mostly for comedy in unique and interesting ways.
Perhaps the biggest and most iconic example of Scorsese casting a comedic actor against type came in 1983's Joker-inspiring classic The King of Comedy. In that film, famed funny man Jerry Lewis was cast to give a deadly-serious performance as late-night TV host Jerry Langford, and though Lewis was not called upon to be particularly funny in the film, he did bring a certain old school show biz quality to the role of Langford, A certain old school quality was also likely what Scorsese wanted when he later cast comedy legend Don Rickles as Frank Rosenthal’s security chief Billy Sherbert in Casino.
Scorsese’s talent for casting is indeed one of his greatest strengths as a filmmaker, and that keen eye for picking actors came into play again when he noticed something in Romano that would make him work as a slimy 1970s music industry figure in Vinyl. Scorsese of course later used Romano again, to great effect, as Teamsters lawyer Bill Bufalino in The Irishman. Thanks to Scorsese, Romano was able to beef up his already impressive acting resume with a pair of unlikely performances in prestigious productions.