Edie Falco may have had a front row seat to “The Sopranos,” but that hasn’t made rewatching old episodes any easier.
For the drama’s six season run, Falco played Carmela Soprano, the mob wife of Tony Soprano, played by the late James Gandolfini.
Gandolfini died at 51 from a heart attack in 2013, just six years after the series came to an end in 2007.
During a chat with The Irish Times, the 58-year-old admitted that she attempted to rewatch the series with her friend Aida Turturro (who played Janice Soprano) but found herself switching the channel after just four episodes.
“It was too fraught, and a big part of that is Jim. People die and you move on, then you see them on screen, and it is too shocking,” she told the outlet.
“And Jimmy and I were kids then. Neither of us knew what we were doing, but we worked in the same way, not preparing, but like kids in a sandbox. Aida and I watched a few episodes and I said, ‘This is killing me,’” she added.
Falco explained that while she “adored Jimmy,” they spent a limited amount of time together off-set, so when she turned on the series, she had a hard time distinguishing the actor from the character.
“When I looked in his face he wasn’t Jim, he was Tony,” she exclaimed.
She also recalled some behind-the-scenes moments with Gandolfini, noting: “We learned tricks so it looked like we were eating, but we weren’t. But Jim ate in every frigging take, and he ate between takes,” she said.
She continued: “There was one scene we were shooting where he was eating a bowl of ice-cream, and in every take he ate and would then refill the bowl, and then at one point I realised he’s not really listening to me – he had gone into a sugar coma.”
Eventually, they had to pause filming and return the next day.
“He was like a five-year-old: ‘The ice-cream is good. I like it!’ I was, like, ‘You gotta stop, you’re gonna get sick!’” she said.
Speaking of food, Falco admits that while her character was the best chef in New Jersey, she can’t cook.
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“Not even close. If you watch the scenes in the show where I’m supposed to be cooking, you’ll see the camera never showed my hands, because I have no idea how to do that. That food is not even the kind of stuff I eat. I was vegetarian on the show, and I became vegan in the past 10 years,” she reveals.
Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, stepped into the role of young Tony Soprano in the prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark.”
While he kept some of his father’s mannerisms, he explained that he tried to change things up emotionally as the prequel takes place decades prior to the timeline of the series.
"I knew that if I embraced his physicality, the audience would really see a lot of Tony," he said, adding, "Then I would have much more room emotionally to completely be different from him."
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He also said being the late actor’s son didn't make stepping into the role of Tony any easier.
He continued: “The only insight that I think I gained was deep pride in him. I’m exhausted after three months — you did that for nine years?”
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