Netflix(NEW YORK) — Netflix subscribers were finally able to tuck into their second helping of Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal’s eating/travelogue series Somebody Feed Phil this weekend.
The sophomore season has Phil eating his way through exotic locales including Mexico City, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Dublin — and his native New York City.
For Rosenthal, his love of food started the moment he left home. “Cooking wasn’t my mom’s strong suit. She’s fantastic in every other department, but she had a setting on her oven for SHOE,” he jokes to ABC Radio. “You know…I thought steak was something terrible — because it was in my house…and until I went to a real steak house in New York and saw it — and I was in my 20s — I was like, ‘That’s steak!?’ It was like my mind exploded!”
Rosenthal says of food: “It’s the great connector right? And then for me, laughs are the cement…I think if you and I are eating we’re already not killing each other. And then if we share a smile or a laugh, then we’re friends.”
Despite the global fame of his award-winning sitcom, Rosenthal isn’t recognizable to most, and he tells ABC Radio he had a little fun with his anonymity. “They don’t know who I am. They’re asking me, ‘Hey what are you filming?’ So I got to make up stuff in a way that like Conan or Jimmy Kimmel, when he goes [places] they all know who he is. But I got to make up stuff! I said to one lady. You to see that show The Bachelor? She goes, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘ I’m the new Bachelor!’ And she looks me up and down she goes, “Good luck with that.’” And she walks away,” he recalled, laughing.
Rosenthal brought back a fan favorite for season 2: Skyping with his parents. Their addition was born of his documentary called Exporting Raymond, about adapting his show for Russian audiences.
“[M]y parents happened to be up in New York and the Russian family Skyped with them,” he says. “It was the funniest part of the movie…So I remembered this when we got the show…I’m no idiot. I know what’s funny, and they’re funny. They are the hit of the show! People tell me, ‘Oh we like your show, we love your parents!’ To which I say, ‘Why do I bother traveling anywhere? Why not just sit in the kitchen with them?'”
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