For many Sopranos fans, the series would be nothing without its lead actor James Gandolfini. Though creator David Chase was the brains behind the series, it’s clear in a new documentary—Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos—that even Chase knew Gandolfini was the one who brought life to his story.
“It was hard to find someone who was the right fit for Tony,” Chase recalls of creating the series, “but then we found Jim. He walked out in the middle of the first audition. Walked out, did his Van Morrison thing. ‘This is bad, I’m doing it right.’ And he walked out. But we thought he was great, so our casting director invited him to my house and he read the scene. It was like, you know… bang.”
From then on, it was “pretty obvious,” Chase says. “He was Tony.” At Gandolfini’s expense, the resemblance could have been for better or worse. “You could say, and I’m not sure about this, maybe Tony was there more than he wanted to admit,” Chase recalls. “That things were too easy for him. People were saying, ‘The show got darker.’ Well, he got darker.”
Gandolfini died of a heart attack in 2013, just six years after The Sopranos ended. In Wise Guy, his co-stars Michael Imperioli, Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco, and Drea de Matteo recalled working with the late actor and seeing what it took behind the scenes to play a character like Tony Soprano.
Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti) “He was very different from Tony Soprano; he was very laid-back. He wore Birkenstocks and liked Green Day and AC/DC. The funny thing is that a lot of fans look to Tony Soprano as a role model—which is scary in a lot of ways. He probably felt that way: people thought he was Tony Soprano, but he wasn’t.”
Lorraine Bracco (Dr. Jennifer Melfi) “He was just, you know, promiscuous. He would kiss me and take my clothes off. I mean, he was just crazy.”
“Jim had never been to therapy. So it was fun to lead him, push him, manipulate him in a way… that’s why I wanted Melfi. I think he was more intimate with me than anyone, and I loved that.”
Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano) “It was always great from start to finish. It always felt like you were playing with him.”
“He put so much into making that character believable. Unless you’re really diligent, you can take your work home with you. As an actor, that’s not always a good idea. So, yeah, I think that might have affected him.”
When Gandolfini got a significant raise just before season 4, the late actor reportedly split his earnings with the entire cast. “I think he felt like HBO had screwed them over. And he wanted to do something to make up for it, to help,” Chase speculated.
“When Jim made the deal, none of us knew it was being offered,” Drea de Matteo recalled of Gandolfini’s generosity. “We didn’t know how to negotiate. I think he felt bad about it,” she said. “So he called us all into his trailer one by one and handed each of us a check for $30,000.”
