“The Sopranos” creator David Chase almost passed on casting James Gandolfini in the lead role because the late actor didn’t seem “threatening enough” to play mob boss Tony Soprano.
In an excerpt published by Vulture of Jason Bailey’s book “Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend,” Gandolfini’s former manager, Nancy Sanders, remembered how Chase was hesitant to offer Gandolfini the role.
“I went, ‘Oh my God, I think I have Tony Soprano,’” Sanders said. However, Chase allegedly told Sanders at the time, “I have one concern, and that is, is he threatening enough?”
IndieWire has reached out to representatives for Chase and HBO.
Sanders recalled telling Chase at the time, “David, if your only concern is, ‘Is he threatening enough’…If you said to me, ‘He’s a little chubby,’ or ‘He’s losing his hair,’ I could understand. But he’s threatening enough. This is your guy.”
Chase also recalled that after Gandolfini’s audition, it was “obvious” he was Tony Soprano. “There was just not any question about it,” Chase said. “He was the guy.”
However, Gandolfini apparently thought he would “never get cast” in the role as HBO would most likely “hire some fucking pretty boy.” Gandolfini is cited in the book as saying, “I thought they’d hire, you know, one of these Irish-looking guys who are all over TV now.” Gandolfini died in 2013.
And Gandolfini was right: The series almost wasn’t cast authentically with real Italian actors. The 2022 book “It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO,” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin, revealed that, initially, “HBO executives didn’t like the name [‘The Sopranos’] since it sounded like a show about opera.” Former HBO executive Chris Albrecht had to push for the mafia series to be filmed on location in New Jersey, unlike the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck,” which centered on a tristate Italian family but was mostly filmed in Toronto.
“That was my big beef about ‘Moonstruck’: phony Italians, phony New York,” Albrecht said. “We always knew it would be more money. But we wanted to make sure that we weren’t full of shit. And making those kinds of commitments would tell people that we were for real.”
“The Sopranos” ran from 1999 to 2007 and garnered 21 Emmy Awards. The prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark,” written by Chase, debuted in 2021. Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, played the younger version of Tony Soprano in the film.
“The Sopranos” alum Michael Imperioli confirmed he and former co-star Steve Schirripa will reunite with showrunner Chase for an upcoming film, co-written by Imperioli. While the plot remains under wraps, fans have speculated that the movie will be part of the expanding “Sopranos” cinematic universe under Chase’s five-year WarnerMedia deal.
