“Rachael Ray” comes off the daytime menu later this month — but its host is adding many more options to her television fare.
“I have more work than I can even comprehend,” Ray, 54, told The Post. “I’m having ‘anxietymares’ about being able to do everything I’m trying to do in the next two years. I’m also producing four other people and it’s a challenge — all I do is ‘dream-produce’ all night and make list after list.
“It’s a little weird.”
Ray segues from “Rachael Ray,” ending its run of original shows May 24 after 17 years on the air, into the new series she will host and produce under her Free Food Studios production company, including a self-described “home show” for A&E.
She will also continue her trips to Ukraine to help the people of that war-torn country.
“We have one left [to film] in the first quarter,” she said regarding the A&E series. “It’s about people who’ve had losses just like mine; they’ve lost their homes to fire or flood … one friend of mine, Anthony, lost his home to a person driving through it. These shows are so moving and these folks have gone through so much, emotionally. We end each of the home shows with food — they design their own menus and I make them anything they want.
“It’s like a genie-in-a-bottle kind of thing.”
Ray, along with a distinguished list of other industry veterans, will be inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame May 3 in a midtown soiree, about 30 blocks uptown from Chelsea Television Studios, home to “Rachael Ray” since its seventh season (the show premiered in September 2006).
Ray said she’s “not sad at all” that her syndicated daytime show is ending.
“I celebrate all of these people and many of them have become family since I’ve known them,” she said. “I’ve never been a person who called HR when people [here] started falling in love with each other. There are families now because our show existed. I’m producing so much TV that I hope I work with everyone again, whether it’s a side-hustle or they work a ton with us.
“I truly believe I’m going to know these people the rest of the days that I’m breathing on the planet. I hope that we’re all together forever.”
Ray said she’s most proud of how “Rachael Ray” evolved once the pandemic hit and she started taping the show from her home in upstate New York before returning the studio, on a hybrid basis, in October 2021.
“The thing I loved about the last few years, especially, is that we were highlighting stories about your neighbors saving the world or humanity or just making you feel better about being an American,” she said. “When we were all tearing each other apart there were people in this world trying to bring everybody together — trying to feed their neighbor or help children get through the idea of what a pandemic is … trying to help their neighbors survive a catastrophic event for the entire planet.
“I know children who are stronger than I am today in my mid 50s,” she said. “I’m just shocked when I stand in the shadow of their giant souls. They’re epic heroes to me … grandmothers, children, folks giving everything to help their fellow humans.
“I was listening to Pink Floy in the car and I actually hate that song, ‘Another Brick in the Wall,'” she said. “You’re not just ‘another brick in the wall.’ It’s simply not true. Everything you do in life matters … and can change someone else’s life. Our engine [on ‘Rachael Ray’] revved up right before we broke up the party — but that’s where the engine starts for the next party, in my opinion.”
Ray taped her final “Rachael Ray” episode weeks ago — and said the finale was one for the ages.
“The last [taping] day was horrifying,” she said. “We had almost two feet of snow [in upstate New York] and we couldn’t film a lot of our interviews … I had to do a bunch of pickup stuff the next day to try to fill in what we couldn’t do since we had no Internet and it was just [her husband] John [Cusimano] and me and no control room. It was crazy.
“I was so messed up, but one of the very last things I did for [‘Rachael Ray’] … Donnie Wahlberg was one of my last guests and he got a little misty when were were talking about the show ending and I was so moved by that — that someone who’s so famous in so many ways and for so long, with his wife [Jenny McCarthy], one of the most beautiful women on the planet who’s also uber-famous — to show that true emotion it really hit me.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, some folks respect you back, dummy — you’re not just a waitress from upstate New York. Some people actually like what you did here, too.'”