Would EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND Get Cancelled Today?

Published: August 21, 2025

rhett-noonan-ePG0jQBbRTk-unsplash — Photo from Rhett Noonan via Unsplash

By Mallory Mattingly

EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND remains one of the most popular sitcoms, with relatable characters and humorous situations that we find ourselves in in real life.

While the show wasn’t known for pushing the envelope, creator Phil Rosenthal reflected on how he might tweak the jokes today to avoid cancel culture.

“I guess you have to be a little more careful, but I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal told Fox News Digital at the Televerse 25 event in Los Angeles over the weekend. “I think it’s good to be sensitive. It doesn’t mean you can’t be funny, it just means you don’t do jokes at other people’s expense, maybe, no matter who they are, unless you’re punching above your class, right? You want to punch up, not down.”

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Throughout the show, Rosenthal continued to show comedic sensitivity, which led EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND to huge success.

“Well, [the show] was designed to be timeless. And we did that by not having topical jokes, jokes of the day, you know?” Rosenthal said. “It would’ve been easy to do Bill Clinton jokes, let’s say, when we were first up. But that dates the show. So we did things that we thought might be universal. Relationships, marriage, sibling rivalry, having kids, having parents. And so it has lasted and this year coming up it will have been 30 years since we were on the air.”

Rosenthal recalled the moment he knew the show would have a lasting impact.

“It was like the third episode. Something happened and we got like a 30-second laugh at something from an audience that hadn’t seen the show yet,” he recalled. “It hadn’t been on TV yet. In the beginning, you’re just filming a bunch of shows and you’re trying to get any audience you can and they would come, and they didn’t know what they were watching. But this laugh was so big that it went beyond just a bit. It became, ‘Oh, they’re cued into the characters.’ And that’s when I knew we had something.”

Many voices in Hollywood have rebuked cancel culture in favor of authenticity.

“Who cares? What made public support so important to begin with? You can’t lead and follow at the same time, and you can’t follow and lead at the same time,” Denzel Washington said in an interview with Complex.

Likewise, comedian Nate Jackson feels cancel culture is starting to come to an end.

“I think that’s kind of a wrap,” Jackson said. “Yeah, I think people realize that there is someone for everyone, and if someone’s not for you, then just don’t watch them.”

Throughout the course of the shows 10-year run on CBS, Rosenthal knew how to keep the comedy clean so that the show would remain successful. Now, many Hollywood stars aren’t concerned with cancel culture as it’s something not the be valued.

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