Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton are standing firmly with their Everybody Loves Raymond co-star Brad Garrett in declining any reboot of the cherished CBS sitcom, which aired for nine seasons and 210 episodes from 1996 to 2005.
“No, there won’t be a reboot,” Romano told the New York Post during the show’s 30th anniversary. “The obvious reason is Peter [Boyle], Doris [Roberts], and one of the kids — they’re no longer with us. We’re all heartbroken. They were a big part of the show’s dynamic. Without them, I don’t know what that dynamic would be. We love the show too much and respect it too much to even try.”
Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, who portrayed Romano’s on-screen parents Frank and Marie, passed away in 2006 and 2016, respectively. Additionally, Sawyer Sweeten, who played one of Romano’s twin sons, tragically died in 2015 at the age of 19.
“To try to do it again without the cast members we’ve lost would be a disservice to the show,” Patricia Heaton added. “You shouldn’t try to redo something that’s pretty much perfect. We need to just leave it there and let people enjoy it for what it was.”
Heaton also explained that Romano and Everybody Loves Raymond creator Philip Rosenthal decided to end the series after nine seasons because “they felt like they’d really done all of the stories.” She added, “They have a lot of integrity in that way. The network would have wanted us to go for three more years, but they didn’t want to run the show into the ground.”
Earlier this month, cast member Brad Garrett told People that a reboot could never happen because “there is no show without the parents. They were the catalyst, and to do anything that would resemble that wouldn’t be right to the audiences or the loyal fan base. And it was about those two families, and you can’t get around that.”
