Fly Me to the Moon: Director Greg Berlanti Recruited Ray Romano With a Handwritten Letter

Greg Berlanti took the reins on Fly Me to the Moon. Back in 2022, Apple Studios acquired the rights to what was then called Project Artemis, a film set on the backdrop of the space race with a conspiratorial twist. At the time, Jason Bateman was slated to direct with Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans were set to co-star. Creative differences and scheduling issues led to both Bateman and Evans exiting, and Apple Studios turned to Berlanti, a veteran producer with only three feature film directing credits to his name, to helm the project. Berlanti wasted no time in crafting the moon landing film in his vision, assembling an all-star cast to join Johansson that included Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, and Ray Romano.

Greg Berlanti’s Handwritten Recruit of Ray Romano

To land Romano, Berlanti went old school. The mastermind behind The CW’s Arrowverse penned the multi-time Emmy Award winner a handwritten letter in hopes of bringing him onto Fly Me to the Moon. 

“He spent the whole first half of the zoom being like, ‘No one’s ever written me this kind of letter before. Why are you doing this? This is a little weird!’” Berlanti joked to ComicBook at the Fly Me to the Moon junket. “I just wanted to show him like how important his work was to me as an artist and how I just think he embodied so many of the [people at NASA]. I like chasing people like that because you never know. It doesn’t always work out. But luckily this time it did.”

Romano went on to play a character named Henry Smalls, a NASA engineering veteran that has given his life to space exploration, particularly in efforts to get a man on the moon. Henry serves as a father figure to Tatum’s Cole Davis, NASA’s launch director. 

While Henry is a fictional part, his personality is an amalgamation of real-life NASA alums, one of which is Rocco Petrone. Petrone served as director of launch operations at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in the late 1960s and went on to become Apollo program director at NASA Headquarters in the final years of his career.

“There was a man who was the original launch director or director of launch operations down there in NASA named Rocco Petrone. He’s beloved. When you go down there, you just see all this footage of him and he even like looks like Ray,” Berlanti continued. “He represented to me so many of my own family and the kinds of people that gave their life to their country and dedicated their service to making something impossible happen, and still felt like everyday Americans.”

Beyond his resemblance physically, Berlanti pointed to Romano’s signature charm as being the icing on his casting.

“He’s a genius, comedically,” Berlanti added. “You knew that he could do a line and make it funny, but still you’re like, ‘How is that? That wasn’t even written funny!’ Yet it’s funny coming out of his mouth.”

Fly Me to the Moon is now in theaters.