Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow couldn’t have been more excited about working together for the first time on the new Netflix series No Good Deed.
“She refused every time I tried [to work with her],” Romano, 66, joked while chatting exclusively with Luxury Handbag Shopping about the series, which hits Netflix Thursday, December 12. “We never met. We had never met. The first time we met was at the table read.”
Kudrow, 61, exclusively told Us that she had been “dying” to work with Romano “for years,” stating, “I’d see him and stuff after [Everybody Loves Raymond] and went, ‘Oh, my God, he’s such a good actor. He’s effortless. Oh, my God. I would love to work with him. I bet that’ll never happen.’”
When No Good Deed came her way, Kudrow jumped at the chance to star alongside Romano. “I said, ‘OK. I don’t know if I need to read the script even, because it’s a yes. It’s Liz Feldman. Ray is my husband in it,’” she gushed.
Romano noted that he booked the show before Kudrow did, stating it felt like a “bonus” when the Friends alum joined the cast.
The pair star in No Good Deed as Paul and Lydia Morgan, a married couple who secretly watch the colorful characters interested in purchasing their Los Angeles home without them knowing. As the buyers take an interest in the house, Paul and Lydia are forced to hide some dark family secrets.
For his part, Romano told Us he was excited to “play things I’ve never played before,” having been a fan of Feldman’s other hit Netflix series, Dead to Me. “I knew the tone that she was trying to go for. It was just all a nice challenge and appealing and yeah, it was kind of an easy decision,” he shared.
Romano found himself hooked on the “five scripts” he read before meeting with Feldman, 47, but Kudrow joked that she was “concerned” about how her character tied into the larger story after reading three episodes. “[I] felt like, ‘Well, OK. But what happened? What’s my role in it?’” she recalled.
Everything paid off in the end, as Romano stated that feeling “concerned” is exactly “what you want the audience to feel.”
Feldman was inspired by late-night searches on the real estate website Zillow while creating the series, something Kudrow said she is also guilty of. “I always am. I get alerts all the time,” she quipped. “I’m not looking to buy anything.”
While Ray leaves the Zillow scrolling to his wife, Anna Romano, Kudrow told Us she likes to imagine the history behind the houses she spots online. “One time, there was a knife over the door when I went to visit a house, and [I] thought, ‘Well, now why? What terrifying things happened to the people that they have a knife?’” she shared. “Unless it’s some kind of superstitious thing.”
Without spoiling the show’s twists and turns, Ray and Kudrow revealed that they were each able to connect to their characters in a personal way. “My character has a hard time expressing himself, and he keeps things bottled up a little,” Ray noted. “So, I tapped into that pretty easily. He does things that maybe I wouldn’t, and he probably has more trouble with anger than I do, but it’s all there. It’s all there somewhere.”
Kudrow said she “always bring[s] something of myself to everything,” but Feldman was able to spot that the character of Lydia was “close” to her. “I was just like, ‘Yep.’ But I don’t want to know what that is,” she said.
No Good Deed premieres on Netflix Thursday, December 12.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
