Menacing mobster Tony Soprano was key to the success of The Sopranos — and James Gandolfini knew it.
The three-time Emmy winner once wielded his critical role in the series by daring the network to fire him, former HBO CEO Chris Albrecht says. The heated moment came after the actor felt ambushed during an intervention meant to address his struggles with substance abuse.
“We did an intervention with him at my apartment in New York,” Albrecht recalled in the new Max docuseries Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos. “That was to try to get him to go to a facility for rehab. We’d had a lot of friction by that point, and the ruse was that I was inviting Jimmy over so we could talk things through and kind of clear the air.”
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Attendees included Gandolfini’s sisters and several of his castmates, said Albrecht, so the star was quick to figure out the situation. “He walked in, and he saw everybody sitting there, and he went, ‘Aw, f— this.’ And he walked out,” Albrecht said. “Everybody went, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy!’ And he turned to me and he went, ‘Fire me,’ and he left.”
Gandolfini ultimately stuck with the show through its end, leading the mafia drama for six seasons from 1999 to 2007. Tony Soprano is still heralded as one of the most influential characters in TV history, and Gandolfini’s performance was critically acclaimed at the time, earning him three Emmy Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award.
Steven Van Zandt, who starred in the hit HBO drama as Silvio Dante, noted that the intervention was not the only occasion on which Gandolfini entertained the idea of leaving the series.
“He probably quit the show every other day. Maybe every day,” said Van Zandt in the doc. “Every other day we would go to a bar and we would have the exact same conversation. We’d get drunk and [he’d] say, ‘I’m done. I can’t, I’m not going back.’ And I would say, ‘Okay, you got a hundred people depending on you here.’ And he’s like, ‘Ah, yeah, yeah, okay.'”
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Van Zandt added that while Gandolfini would usually be back to work the next day, he would also “disappear” for brief periods of time, when the pressure of leading the series “got to him.”
His onscreen wife Edie Falco said, “He was incredibly invested in making that character believable, and unless you’re really diligent you can end up taking your work home. And as an actor, that’s not always a great idea.”
The Sopranos creator David Chase went so far as to liken Gandolfini to the character he so famously portrayed. “He was really a good guy and really complicated,” Chase said in Wise Guy. “You might say, and I’m not sure about this, maybe there was more Tony there than he wanted to admit. That it was too easy for him.”
Gandolfini died of a heart attack on June 19, 2013, at the age of 51. Last year marked the 10th anniversary of his unexpected death, for which several of his costars shared heartfelt tributes.
“Forever grateful to have done so much work together, to have spent so much time in your company, and for all the generosity and kindness,” wrote Michael Imperioli. “Miss you lots, as do so many on the planet.”
Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos is available to stream on Max, as are all six seasons of The Sopranos.
