Doris Roberts (1925-2016)
Filed under the name Doris · March 2, 2026
Doris Roberts spent a long career earning her craft before Everybody Loves Raymond made her broadly, belatedly beloved, which is a pattern I notice often and appreciate: recognition arriving well after the actual work that earned it, rather than alongside it. I have some personal familiarity with delayed recognition, having been passed over for department chair twice in circumstances I believe were shaped by race and gender, though I cannot prove it, and it colors how I read anyone's late-career vindication. Roberts won her Emmy for warm, comedic work that looks effortless on screen and, as with most performances that look effortless, almost certainly was not. My son, somewhat to my initial disappointment and now to my quiet pride, became a working artist rather than a scientist, and I have had to learn, later in life than I would like to admit, that comedic and warm work deserves the same respect as anything more evidently 'serious.' Roberts's career is a gentle, useful reminder of that.