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When Ray Romano<\/strong> finished his near-decade-long run on Everybody Loves Raymond,<\/em> he felt hungry for a new challenge. He started saying no to sitcom offers, developed his own well-regarded but short-lived drama, Men of a Certain Age,<\/em> and put himself out there by directly asking for a dramatic role on Jason Katims<\/strong>\u2019s Parenthood.<\/em> (He wound up starring in the NBC hit\u2019s final three seasons.) \u201cWhen you\u2019re coming off of nine years of a sitcom, you\u2019ve got to take baby steps,\u201d Romano says. \u201cThe audience doesn\u2019t see you in that light.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s put in a lot of work since those early breakthroughs\u2014see his terrific supporting work in everything from The Big Sick<\/em> to Bad Education<\/em> and The Irishman<\/em>\u2014but still, viewers may not be primed for just how dark Romano goes in No Good Deed<\/em> (streaming December 12), the latest genre-busting Netflix series from Dead to Me<\/em> creator Liz Feldman.<\/strong> This half-hour show veers from broad comedy to wrenching drama, following various couples whose fates converge at an open house in a leafy Los Angeles neighborhood\u2014to both emotional and shocking ends.<\/p>\n Romano and another sitcom legend, Lisa Kudrow,<\/strong> anchor the swirling action as the home\u2019s owners, Paul and Lydia, whose motivation to sell comes into clearer view with each episode. The spouses carry secrets, resentments, debts, and petty feuds that start to overwhelm them, allowing the two Emmy winners to hit some pleasingly familiar comic notes\u2014but also far more complex ones of desperation, grief, and regret. As Romano says, he\u2019s developed ways to go to those kinds of places as an actor over the years. He\u2019s still learning on the fly, though\u2014and has some big ideas for where he\u2019d like to go next.<\/p>\n Vanity Fair:<\/em> This is new territory for you as an actor. What did you make of Liz Feldman approaching you for No Good Deed<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ray Romano:<\/strong> I can\u2019t remember if she said why, and I would never ask\u2014I don\u2019t think I would risk asking her that. [Laughs<\/em>] But I do believe she told me she had me in mind right from the get go. It\u2019s labeled as a dark comedy, and that\u2019s true, but I kind of feel like it\u2019s a dark dramedy if you\u2019re going to be really specific. There is a caricature to some of the people and some of the humor, but it\u2019s all still grounded. And if I have to go out on a limb and say something nice about my stupid self, I think what she saw in me was that that\u2019s kind of my wheelhouse. I like comedy, and if it\u2019s big, it\u2019s big. But I always want it to feel grounded in some type of reality. That\u2019s the way this show goes.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a darkness to your performance too. Paul is haunted, but we don\u2019t exactly know why until the end of the season. How did you approach those scenes, teasing out what\u2019s going on inside of the character while not giving it away?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a whodunit aspect to it, there\u2019s a mystery. I just played it the only way I knew how. And for that I needed to know\u2014because there was a mystery to us, also. Not all the episodes were written, and we weren\u2019t given them all. Myself and Lisa, we needed to know: What are we playing here? What really has happened? Liz knew as an actor that we needed to know, and she did tell us. I took all the information I had on that character, and I did what I always do: I made up a whole little backstory for him, with the house and with his brother. I just put that in my own head and that stays in the back. You write it, you read it, and then you put it away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n