Ray Romanois fighting an internal fatherly battle — with his heart in the right place — inSomewhere in Queens.
The actor plays Leo Russo, who “lives a simple life in Queens, New York, with his wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf), their shy but talented son “Sticks” (Jacob Ward) and Leo’s close-knit network of Italian-American relatives and neighborhood friends,” according to an official synopsis. “Happy enough working at the family construction business alongside his father (Tony Lo Bianco) and younger brother (Sebastian Maniscalco), Leo lives each week for Sticks' high-school basketball games, never missing a chance to cheer on his only child as he rules the court as a star athlete.”
“When the high-school senior gets asurprising and life-changing opportunityto play basketball in college, Leo jumps at the chance to provide a plan for his future, away from the family construction business,” the synopsis adds. “But when sudden heartbreak threatens to derail Sticks, Leo goes to unexpected lengths to keep his son on this new path.”
Speaking with PEOPLE, Romano sayshe and co-writer Mark Stegemann wanted “to write about this culture, this family, but also make it universal to everybody because that’s normally what it is.”
“The formula that worked with[Everybody Loves]Raymond, was it was specific to us, [as] New Yorkers, but it was family. So it didn’t matter where you were from. You identified with it,” he adds.
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Ray Romano and Laurie Metcalf inSomewhere in Queens(2023).Mary Cybulski/Courtesy Roadside Attractions
A real-life father of four, Romano says the story is somewhat based on his own experience growing up in Queens, New York, as well as a similar dynamic he had with his youngest son Joseph Romano, now 25, who played basketball in high school.
“He was graduating and it was getting towards the end of his basketball career,” Romano says. And while Joseph “was the center of attention” in high school, he just wasn’t “college-basketball material.”
Romano recalls “tearing up” while hugging Joseph’s coach during the last game of his son’s high-school career, and enjoying “that I had the son who was one of the stars of the basketball team.”
“And my thought was, what if this [movie] was about a guy who, that’s all he had — he felt invisible in his real life and the only time he felt any kind of purpose or attention was through his son and the basketball, and it was ending?” he tells PEOPLE. “And that was the jumping-off point of the story.”
Cast ofSomewhere in Queens(2023).Mary Cybulski/Courtesy Roadside Attractions
“So I injected all that as much as I could. And then we also wrote characters and wrote story, but most of it came from a real place,” Romano says.
Asked what it was like working along another sitcom veteran in Metcalf, who made waves onRoseanneand stars in its current sequel seriesThe Conners, Romano admits he was “intimidated to meet” her at first, “but she was wonderful.”
He also said the crew knew how much of a “pro” Metcalf was in both comedic and dramatic roles (e.g.,Lady Bird), and “trusted” the Midwest-raised actress “more than she trusted herself” in being able to convey “a believable East Coast working-class woman.”
“She actually went to a dialect coach,” Romano adds of the multi-timeTony Award- andEmmy Award-winning actress.
Poster forSomewhere in Queens(2023).Courtesy Roadside Attractions
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Despite boasting a successful 30-plus-year career in film and television, Romano has never directed until now. “I was scared, to be honest,” he tells PEOPLE.
“OnEverybody Loves Raymond, I guess I had an opportunity if I wanted to, but I didn’t really have the desire,” he explains. “I was more concerned withthe writing and my own stuff. I didn’t really feel like it was important that I direct one of those episodes. And with my other shows, it just never happened.”
Romano also says he “felt we had very capable, good directors,” onRaymond, adding, “And I was maybe a little bit gun shy to tell an actor what to do.”
“But then with [Somewhere in Queens], it was such a personal thing, and my agent was the first one to suggest it to me to direct,” he recalls. “I told them my concerns, the technical side of it. And he just [advised me], ‘Surround yourself with a good cinematographer, a good [assistant director], and you’ll be okay. And you know what you’d like to see.’ "
“And I know every bit of what we want to getfrom the story and from the actors,” Romano adds. “That is what I was: I devoted all my energy into getting what we envisioned out of the performance and let the actor also bring whatever they wanted to bring to it.”
Somewhere in Queens, from Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, is in theaters April 21.
source: people.com
