There can be no doubting just what a monumental TV show The Sopranos was.
It blazed a trail for all the amazing drama we get to binge-watch today, gave us some of the most iconic characters still talked about and an ending, the infamous cut to black, that has since become television history, a real you had to be there moment that’s earned its stripes. Steve Buscemi was in 17 episodes, directing four, so he is more than entitled to give his opinion.
Buscemi joined the cast in season five as Tony Blundetto, the childhood friend and cousin of Tony Soprano, and proved disastrous for the mafia family as he emerged from a long stint in prison and dragged them into a mob war. Despite attempting to go straight and setting up a massage business, he ends up coming to a messy end, but not before proving to be a key component in the story and eventually haunting Soprano from beyond the grave.
So what does Buscemi, who directed episodes of the show as far back as season three, think of that polarising ending, filmed in an ice cream parlour called Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey?
“I thought it was brilliant,” he admitted, “I mean, I was on the edge of my seat like everybody else and was blown away. I was also relieved that if anything did happen to Tony, I didn’t have to witness it”.
Buscemi picked up an Emmy award nomination for his work on the show as Blundetto and appeared once again in season six as a country club doorman in Tony Soprano’s dreams of an afterlife. Despite his haunting of the big man, however, he didn’t want any harm to come to any of the Sopranos.
He explained: “In some ways I was dreading the last episode because I just thought that something horrible was going to happen to the whole family, but I thought the way it ended was just great so that in my mind I could just envision them sort of going on, certainly looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days, but I was relieved that I didn’t have to witness any more violence against the family.”
A few years later, the actor went on to star in another HBO New Jersey epic, this time Boardwalk Empire, which shared a writer and producer with The Sopranos in Terence Winter. Several other actors also appeared in both shows, along with writers and crew members, with Boardwalk Empire focusing on corruption in Atlantic City during America’s prohibition era.
Buscemi earned a Golden Globe for his performance as Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson, and the show ended up running for five seasons after a pilot directed by none other than Martin Scorsese.
After a stellar 25 years since The Sopranos first broadcast, for the past few years, the man has focused on producing and doing voiceover work in movies, but recently, he’s starred in Netflix’s Addams Family spin-off Wednesday as the shady Principal Dort.
Next year, he’ll be seen in the massively anticipated new film from The Banshees of Inisherin director Martin McDonagh, called Wild Horse Nine. He lines up along Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich in a huge ensemble cast for the movie, the plot details of which are still a closely guarded secret.
