There exists a sitcom, and some may argue that it is the greatest sitcom of all time. I would have to agree with them. The show is “Everybody Loves Raymond.” There also exists a universal truth about the show’s creator, Phil Rosenthal. And that is: Everybody loves Phil.
Well, I do anyway. Having spent time with him in real life – and watched him for years on his Netflix show, “Somebody Feed Phil” – Phil is one of the friendliest, warmest and happiest people I have ever come across over two decades in my career in show business.
I’ve been lucky enough to interview Phil a couple of times over the years, and I got to catch up with him recently about his upcoming event with Temple Israel of Hollywood, “TIOH Speaks Shabbat: Phil Rosenthal & Lily.” It’s taking place on Friday, April 1 during Shabbat services and over dinner.
While Phil has a background in food through his show, in 2021 his daughter Lily, an actress, and fellow actress Olivia Sui brought together LA restaurants for a series of sold-out collaborations. During the Shabbat event, Phil and Lily will be talking about their Jewish roots and love of food.
“This is special to me because my daughter is 24 and a full-grown person,” Rosenthal said. “She will be the best part of this thing.”
“This is special to me because my daughter is 24 and a full-grown person,” Rosenthal said. “She will be the best part of this thing. She is so charming, lovely, sweet and funny, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. For old man Rosenthal to sit on the stage and let people enjoy Lily, that to me is everything.”
Rosenthal and his family are longtime members of the synagogue. Lily and her brother, Ben, went to day school there, and his wife, “Everybody Loves Raymond” star Monica Horan, attends services regularly.
“I support the temple because it is a place of good,” Rosenthal, who cites Hasiba and Shiloh’s Steakhouse as his favorite kosher restaurants in LA, said. “My wife attends services more than I do because she converted to Judaism, and converts are always much more into it. They chose it, but I had no choice. My attitude is I paid my dues and went to Hebrew school for 12 years. I did it. But I love everyone who goes there.”
In addition to Horan, food is one of the great loves of Rosenthal’s life. For four seasons, he’s traveled around the world, eating foods from all different cultures and filming his adventures for his Netflix show “Somebody Feed Phil.” It was renewed for a fifth season in early 2021, but a release date has yet to be announced.
The show featured video calls with Rosenthal’s parents, Max and Helen, who were just as endearing as their son; it was clear where he got his charm from. Sadly, Max passed away in 2021, and Helen died in 2019.
“The Zoom call, or the Facetime or Google call, is the modern-day equivalent of the postcard, which gave me an organic reason to put [my parents] into the show,” said Rosenthal.
One of Rosenthal’s fondest memories was eating his mother’s matzo ball soup.
“There wasn’t great food in our house because we didn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “Both of my parents worked and they didn’t have time to devote to create gourmet meals for the kids, who hated everything anyway. I don’t know if it was because the food wasn’t great or I was picky, I have no idea. What came first: The chicken or the rotten egg? But [my mom] did make a mean matzo ball soup. In fact, we featured it in the New York episode of the show.”
That soup stuck out so much in his mind that he includes it in his imaginary last meal. “I was asked what my last meal would be, and I decided it would be a collection of childhood favorites like pizza, hot dogs, fried chicken, ice cream and chocolate, and end with my mom’s matzo ball soup,” he said. “I believe it should come full circle back to whatever your mom made.”
Rosenthal’s parents were always supportive of him and his brother, Richard Rosenthal, the showrunner and executive producer of “Somebody Feed Phil.”
“The thing that gave my parents the most nachas was to see their two boys [working together],” he said.
In 1989, Rosenthal got his start in show business when he moved from New York to LA. Just seven years later, “Everybody Loves Raymond” premiered. It went on to run until 2005, earned over 70 Emmy nominations and won 15 awards.
What made “Everybody Loves Raymond” so great is that you feel like a fly on a wall in a very entertaining family’s household. It’s all grounded in reality. Everything that happens is plausible, and so the comedy comes out of real-life situations. According to Rosenthal, that was intentional.
“The more specific you make that family in the sitcom, the more relatable it’s going to be,” he said. “We all have a family, or hopefully have some kind of family. Even if it’s not people you’re related to who you formed a family with, you understand the specifics of personality and relationships and behavior.”
He continued, “We had one rule in the writers’ room: Could this happen? That’s it. Could this happen in real life?”
Rosenthal said that many shows ignore that rule for the sake of being funny. “I always felt that if you live by that sword, you die by that sword. You’re only as funny as your last joke because the audience doesn’t have real life to tie it to. It’s a collection of jokes and one-liners and [they’re] not tethered to reality. The audience has no other reason to hang on except for those jokes and laughs.”
With his work on “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Somebody Feed Phil,” Rosenthal keeps a key piece of guidance he once received in mind.
“The best advice I ever got was from an old showrunner who said, ‘Do the show you want to do because in the end, they’re going to cancel you anyway,” he said. “It’s also a good philosophy for life.”
“The best advice I ever got was from an old showrunner who said, ‘Do the show you want to do because in the end, they’re going to cancel you anyway,” he said. “It’s also a good philosophy for life.”
You can purchase tickets for “TIOH Speaks Shabbat: Phil Rosenthal & Lily” on TIOH’s website.
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