Ray Romano is over the hill. He knows it. And the 51-year-old Emmy winner has no qualms about portraying exactly what that means — from failing health to broken relationships to anything else that doesn’t quite work as well as it once did — in his new comedy, “Men of a Certain Age.”
Romano began working on the new series just months after the finale of his hit sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond” in 2005 (he’s credited as “Men of a Certain Age” creator, writer, executive producer and star). He enlisted friend and “Raymond” writer Mike Royce for the project. “We were kind of going through the same thing — this need and this search for direction in the next thing in our life, and so we said let’s write about this,” Romano recalls.
The result is an honest, darkly funny and universal exploration of relationships and identity seen through the eyes of three friends (Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher) who just happen to be middle-aged guys. Still, “we’re not trying to get the MTV crowd,” Romano says. “We’re not doing anything specific to appeal to anybody younger.”
Not with lingering shots of Romano shirtless, at least.
“Sometimes when I look at … myself in a close-up or with my shirt off [on the show], I’m like, ‘S—. My next gig, I’m definitely going to be behind the camera,’” he deadpans.
