In Right Here, Around the Corner, his new Netflix comedy special, Ray Romano explores a New York neighborhood he knows well. As he ambles toward the Comedy Cellar, he confesses that it’s been 23 years since his last special—and 32 years since he started performing comedy. At one point, a casual passerby calls out to him. Romano replies bemusedly, a Henry Hill without swagger: “He doesn’t know who I am.“
That’s the general tone Romano strikes throughout Right Here, splitting short sets (about 20 minutes each) between the Cellar and the Village Underground, another club around the corner. Both times, he surprises audiences who have no idea that Romano is set to perform. He’s doing guest spots, those loose, fabled sets that tourists complain about never seeing—and regulars brag about for years.
While there’s nothing controversial or groundbreaking in Romano’s set—the Cellar routine is about friends and aging, while the latter centers on family—his delivery is cozy and warm. It would feel disingenuous to see Romano in some chaotically edited, oversaturated production, and the comedian knows it. But in his 61st year, he still appears to get a brief spike of nerves before taking the stage—then assuring the crowd, in typical Romano everyman fashion, “We are both gonna be disappointed.”
As his special premiered, Romano stopped to chat with me about the 80s club scene, cultural sensitivity, and getting booted from two high schools as a teenager.
Vanity Fair: It’s been 23 years since your last comedy special. You’ve never stopped doing stand-up—but did acting become your true love, and stand-up your mistress?
Ray Romano: In the very beginning, I was just drawn to performing. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, until someone told me about audition night at the Improv in New York City. I wrote five minutes, went onstage, and got my first laugh. That was it, man. I knew I wanted to do stand-up. Little opportunities came up for commercial auditions, but it wasn’t until 10 years into my stand-up career that I thought about acting as the next step. I know [Jerry] Seinfeld was never interested in acting, but that wasn’t the case with me.
If you take a hiatus from stand-up, does performance anxiety set in? Do you start overthinking your rhythm or timing?
A little bit, and I’ll say the routine out loud to make sure that I remember it. Naturally, the rhythm will come back. I have to do a speed-through, to make sure I remember everything. I’m usually alone when I do that, but if my friends are around, I do bother them to quiz me with the bullet notes of the set. When I’m doing a long set, I have to keep it in order. If I jump around, then I forget things.
Was shooting the special really as loose as it feels?
The audience, 100 percent, did not know I was going on. We set a time for me to come in, so it wasn’t like I just walked in off the street, into the Comedy Cellar. We had cameras set up and everything, but the audience was told that the Cellar was just filming a promo, and we used that same line for both clubs. For the first show, we knew I was going to go on after the third comedian, so I knew what time I had to be there. I like that energy, and that’s what I do when I go into the city. I just pop in, and the energy from those moments is something that I wanted to try and get on camera.
You poke fun at the millennial crowd in your special. Do you think there’s a marked difference, in attitude and attention, between today’s crowd and an 80s audience?
As for sitting down and watching a movie, or a TV show, I think there is a major difference. For stand-up, I feel like when I go on stage now for a young crowd at the Comedy Cellar, or somewhere in New York, they’re really good. They know stand-up, and are into it, and I think they appreciate it even more now. What worries me is if movies will become obsolete. Will they sit down for something that’s two hours long, because everything is 10-second intervals now?
