Moving from stand-up to television may not seem like a big jump, but for Ray Romano, it was a difficult transition. The actor had made his mark as a comedian performing his own original comedy before starring in the popular sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond.

Romano acknowledged that beginning the series took some adjusting. On stage as a comedian, he was writing and performing his own material. While working in television, Romano had a team of writers telling him what to say.

“I had to learn how to get gratified by saying someone else’s joke and getting a laugh,” said the actor during an interview with the Sentinel Tribune. “What really was weird as a standup, I almost resented it. I almost wouldn’t get any gratification. ...I had the standup mentality of ‘no one can tell me what’s funny. I know what’s funny to say here, so I had to learn how to get over that.”

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Eventually, Romano grew accustomed to the television machine and even began to appreciate the show’s material.

“Little by little, I realized we are doing a show, and yes, I’m sort of playing myself,” said the actor. “But also this is a character, and we are putting on a show to entertain people.”

Moreover, even though the series was fiction, Romano and the writers frequently utilized elements of their real lives when writing episode plots.

“I get a lot of people saying, that’s my mother, that’s my father,” said Romano during an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal. “Thank God for dysfunction.”