Lorraine Bracco Says She’s “Not Really Happy” With How The Sopranos Ended for Her Character: “It Was Bad and Wrong” Lorraine Bracco, like many other Sopranos fans, couldn’t understand how the show ended.
During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, the actress — who played Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the hit show — admitted that she wasn’t happy with how the show ended things between her character and James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano.
On The Sopranos, Dr. Melfi served as Tony’s therapist. Despite the “will-they-won’t-they” storylines that played out throughout the show’s relationship, the two never pursued a romantic relationship. Fearing that she might be aiding his criminal activities through therapy, she informed him that she could no longer treat him without telling him the real reason behind her decision.
While she couldn’t actually say whether the two characters would ever see each other again, Braccos said, “I think they ran into each other at restaurants and things like that. I don’t know. I think part of me wants to believe that she left him for a while and they got back together [and] went back to therapy.”
The former Goodfellas actress, 69, recalled feeling “heartbroken” by the end of the show. She added that she also felt unresolved by the series’ ending.
“I wasn’t too happy with the way [creator David Chase] ended it either,” she explained. “I thought it was terrible and wrong. I was angry. I said to him, ‘How can you invest five years in someone’s life and then just walk away?’ I said that’s not okay.”
Bracco wasn’t the only cast member to have similar feelings about the show’s ending.
In HBO’s new documentary, Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos, Bracco shares Gandolfini’s take on the final scene of the network drama, in which Tony (Gandolfini), Carmela (Edie Falco), Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and A.J. (Robert Iler) are dining together at Holsten’s diner. A hitman wearing a Members’ Only jacket sits nearby and goes to the bathroom; as Meadow runs from her parked car to the restaurant, the scene cuts to black.
“I was with Jim. Jim said, ‘That’s it? That’s it?’” she recalls. “He couldn’t believe it. … I think he was just as shocked as everyone else.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos is available to stream on Max. Seasons 1 through 6 of The Sopranos are also available on the streaming platform.
