Why Edie Falco Didn’t ‘Socialize’ with James Gandolfini Outside The Sopranos Set

Edie Falco‘s off-camera relationship with the late James Gandolfini was not what fans would guess.

In Jason Bailey’s new memoir about the late actor, who died in 2013 following a heart attack, GANDOLFINI: Jim, Tony, and the Life of A Legend, released on April 29, Falco, 61, offered new insight into the dynamic between her and her onscreen husband when the cameras weren’t rolling on The Sopranos.

“I ­really ­didn’t have much of a relationship with Jim outside of our shooting relationship,” Falco said in the book. “He was a very gregarious person, but we ­didn’t socialize. We ­didn’t have the same group of friends.”

Things between them were “certainly cordial and professional,” Falco said, “But we­ didn’t hang out.”

“It was not on purpose, it was just the way it was,” she continued. “I’m thinking part of me really just loved the very full, dimensional relationship I had with him as Tony. And I think maybe I only wanted that.”

Elaborating further on their dynamics on-set, Falco, who played Carmela, the wife of Gandolfini’s mob boss Tony Soprano, said, “We kind of stayed out of each other’s ways when we weren’t shooting, if we had a break, or if they were changing the camera angle. There was no chitchat, and there wasn’t like, ‘What do you need me to do? Should I leave?’ There was no discussion about it.”

Instead, the actors shared “an intrinsic understanding” of each other — and of what they needed to get the scene right.

Though she wasn’t particularly close with him, Falco described her costar as a “tremendously generous soul.”

She recalled that he was “always getting presents for people, doing nice things, taking care of people, families,” which echoed what many of his other costars said in the memoir, too.

Falco and Gandolfini, who was just 51 when he died, reconnected in 2012, five years after the finale of The Sopranos aired.

Over dinner in New York City, Falco felt connected to him for the first time. “I actually thought, Oh, who’s this guy? You know what I mean? I so did not feel close to him — my own ­doing — throughout the years. And all of a sudden I realized, Oh, that’s right. He was on that ­ride with me too, you know?”

She continued of how Gandolfini had changed in the years since the show’s conclusion, “He was just easier. He smiled a lot. The stress appeared to have lifted. I daresay he definitely seemed happier, for sure.”