October 23 - 29, 2022 BY GEORGE DICKIE
Phil Rosenthal OF ‘SOMEBODY FEED PHIL’ ON NETFLIX Is it true that your parents Max and Helen Rosenthal inspired Frank and Marie Barone from “Everybody Loves Raymond”?
That’s true. A little bit of Ray’s (Romano) dad is in there but a lot of my mom is in there. Now, she didn’t look like that, obviously, but that kind of attitude, you know, that was there. But the part where she was jealous of her daughter-in-law, though, was taken from my father’s mother, who had that attitude towards my mother. So it’s funny when you’re writing, you take from everywhere and you put in traits from wherever you can. I can’t say any of them are carbon copies but I can say that many of the stories on ‘Raymond’ were inspired by them. Did Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts ever meet them?
Not before we started. You know, when Doris Roberts came in to audition, she auditioned with this “Fruit of the Month Club” scene, which was a scene that I took directly from sending my parents Fruit of the Month Club. And my mother freaked out as if I sent her a box of heads from a murderer. She said, “What am I going to do with all this fruit?” And I said, “You eat it. You share it with your friends.” “We don’t have that many friends. There’s like 11 pears here.” I said, “Well, another box is coming next month.” She said, “What? More pears?” I said, “No, a different box every month.” She said, “Every month? I can’t talk anymore. There’s too much fruit in the house.”
‘Mysterious Benedict Society’ — Nefarious scheme threatens the world
So I put that in the show to demonstrate how crazy Ray’s parents in the show would be and that turned out to be the scene that got us on the air. That’s because it was so specific and so character-defining and situation-defining of what Ray was going to be up against.
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Tony Hale stars in “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” premiering its second season Wednesday on Disney+. SM-LA2020252