Romano pursues a life after ‘Raymond’

PASADENA — LIKE everybody, Ray Romano loves Raymond.

He’d just like Raymond to take an occasional step back so Romano could do something else for a while.

He thinks he’s getting there, although it might have been faster if TNT hadn’t canceled his dramedy “Men of a Certain Age” in 2011.

He’s now on NBC’s “Parenthood,” not playing Raymond, and he’s one of the featured experts on the next installment of PBS’ “Pioneers of Television” in April.

“It’s hard to complain about ‘Raymond,’ ” says Romano. “It’s because of ‘Raymond’ that I don’t have to pick roles for the money.”

“Everybody Loves Raymond,” which co-starred Romano and Patricia Heaton, ran from 1996 to 2005 and is enjoying a robust afterlife in reruns.

“It’s the show I wanted to make my whole career,” says the Queens-born Romano. “But I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want to do a sitcom.

“The problem is, people still look at me as Raymond. I understand why. I’m guilty of it myself with other actors. But I’d like to do other things.”

He hoped that would be “Men of a Certain Age,” a smart drama about three men with midlife crises in which he co-starred with Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher. It was critically embraced and won a Peabody, which couldn’t save it.

“I was sorry it ended,” says Romano, 56. “I still am. But I give TNT all the credit for taking a chance on it. You say you’re making a show about three middle-aged guys, and you don’t get a lot of callbacks.

“In the end, I think it just wasn’t a fit. Their shows are more like cops and lawyers.”

Maybe, he jokes, “we should have cast a vampire or a zombie. Or a vampire zombie. No one has done that yet.”

Hey, no one would confuse it with Raymond.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com