HBO’s new documentary—which tracks the making of the series—interviews the likes of David Chase, Edie Falco, and Michael Imperioli.
For many fans of The Sopranos, the series was nothing without leading man 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 that Gandolfini was the one who brought his story alive.
“It was very difficult to find a guy for Tony,” Chase recalls about creating the series, “but then we found Jim. He left in the middle of the first audition. Walked out, doing his Van Morrison thing. ‘This is shit, I’m doing this right.’ And he left. But we thought he was great, so our casting directors got him to come to my house and he read the scene. It was like, you know…bang.”
From then on, it was “pretty obvious,” says Chase. “He was Tony.” According to Gandolfini’s costars, the resemblance was for better and for worse. “You might say, and I’m not sure about this, maybe there was more Tony there than he wanted to admit,” Chase remembers. “That it was too easy for him. People say, ‘The show got darker.’ Well, he got darker.”
Gandolfini died of a heart attack in 2013, just six years after the end of The Sopranos. In Wise Guy, his costars Michael Imperioli, Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco, and Drea de Matteo remember 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 than Tony Soprano; he was very laid-back. He wore Birkenstocks and liked Green Day and AC/DC. What’s funny is that a lot of fans look at Tony Soprano as kind of a role model—which is very scary in a lot of ways. He probably felt that: people thinking he’s Tony Soprano and he’s not.”
Lorraine Bracco (Dr. Jennifer Melfi)
“He would just, you know, fuck around. He would throw kisses at me and take his clothes off. I mean, he was just a lunatic.”
“Jim had never been in therapy. So that was kind of fun to lead him, push him, manipulate him in a way…which is why I wanted Melfi. I thought he was more intimate with me than anybody, and I loved it.”
Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano)
“It was always great from the beginning to the very end. It always felt like playing with him.”
“He was incredibly invested in making that character believable. Unless you’re really diligent, you can end up taking your work home. As an actor, that’s not always a great idea. So, yeah, I think it may have taken a toll on him.”
Drea de Matteo (Adriana La Cerva)
When Gandolfini received a massive pay raise right before season 4, the late actor reportedly shared his earnings with the entire cast. “I think he felt HBO had fucked them. And he wanted to do something to make up for it, to help,” Chase guesses.
According to Drea de Matteo, “When Jim got the deal, none of us even knew it was on the table.” She recalls Gandolfini’s generosity. “We didn’t know to negotiate. I think he felt terrible about that,” she says. “So he called us all into his trailer one by one and gave everybody a check for $30,000.”
“He was a very goodhearted, kind man,” Falco adds. “Looking out for his friends.”
