“James Gandolfini wanted to leave” the soprano “every day” | EUROtoday

Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano appears to be constructed as a lot by the physique (silences, respiratory, appears to be like) as by dialogue. When did he attain this virtually bodily mastery of the position?

I believe it was one thing he has developed all through the sequence. Some instruments are already there from the primary episode – every little thing he does together with his eyes, for instance, is fascinating. Other components have appeared over time: his heavy respiratory, for instance, has turn out to be a signature as he was gaining weight over the seasons, however he made a weapon, a device to underline the bodily and psychological energy of Tony.

But what ought to actually be famous is that, in contrast to many sequence the place the actors grop earlier than discovering their character, Tony Soprano is there, absolutely shaped, from the primary picture. Of course, he refined it over the seven seasons, however he had already understood this character from the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKL3_4XQA-S

Your e book is filled with anecdotes on the meticulous preparation of Gandolfini (sheets, immersion within the character, partitions coated with pictures), but in addition on his frequent delays and absences on the set. How do you clarify this paradox between an obsessive work ethics and this type of recurring sabotage?

When I requested a member of the crew this query, who had labored with him on The soprano And on a number of movies, his reply was easy: “It was an addict. It’s actually so simple as that: he wished to do his finest, and he was a perfectionist in some ways, however this impulse usually was nervousness and nervousness, which he stifled with medicine and alcohol, which ended up harming his work. It is a vicious circle. Several individuals do not forget that he mentioned he wished to “leave The soprano Every day, ”as the role devoured it.

What kept him? A sense of duty towards the team, or the fear of emptiness? Jim was a guy from the working class, and a fervent defender of the unions, which largely explains his reluctance to leave. He no longer needed this work or this money. But he was perfectly aware of the number of people who lived thanks to this series, and he knew them personally (it was not the genre to stay away, locked up in his lodge on the set), and he did not want to drop them.

Over the seasons, did he influence the evolution of his character?

I think that as soon as a series lasts a long time, and that the writers get to know the actors who embody the roles, their vision of these personalities ends up influencing writing. This was clearly the case here, since Jim’s deep melancholy pulled the character towards darker, more sad zones.

But he also wanted the scriptwriters for this, treating them with vultures or vampires, because they included fragments of his own life in the series – in particular the fact that the separation of Tony and Carmela coincides almost exactly with that, very public and acrimonious, between Jim and his first wife, Marcy.

Turning this series allowed him, quite ironically, to follow a form of therapy through Tony.

The soprano is a series haunted by death, guilt and existential vacuum. Do you think that Gandolfini put something personal there, or that the series revealed things that he might never have expressed otherwise?

I don’t think it’s one or the other. He was undoubtedly haunted by his own darkness, his demons, as almost all the people I questioned. But it was not someone who, by himself, would have explored these areas in depth. Turning this series allowed him, quite ironically, to follow a form of therapy through Tony. It helped him understand himself better, and better understand the kind of person he wanted to be.

You describe celebrity as a kind of curse it has suffered. How did he live the fact of being reduced to Tony Soprano in the eyes of the public?

He hated being famous. He had the feeling that it was not what he had signed for, which may often seem to be an easy excuse among celebrities, but at home it was holding the road. He did not run neither after celebrity, nor after the first roles: he saw himself simply as an actor of composition, a “character actor” who did his job, and he would undoubtedly have remained in the shadows if this role had not found him.

He did his best to remain polite with the obsessive fans of Soprano whom he met in public, but he often asked that he is left to space; He just wanted to do his job and live his life, which, in itself, is not such an unreasonable request.

You also talk about his work on documentaries, especially about the veterans of the war in Iraq. Can we say that after having embodied violence through Tony Soprano, he turned to those who had really suffered it?

I don’t think the link is also direct or, if it were, it was undoubtedly unconscious. When I spoke to Tom Richardson, who worked on these documentaries with him and who was a friend from college, he explained to me that it was above all a desire to use his platform (in this case, his production contract with HBO) to highlight the subjects that were close to his heart.

He had met soldiers and veterans during the broadcast of the series, through his commitment to the USO (United Service Organizations, an association which provides leisure and moral support services to the members of the American army) and the Wounded Warriors Project, therefore their cause was particularly close to his heart. For him, it was obvious to take it.

David Chase said, “He did not have a loss of life on the display screen, however he had an actual one. In your opinion, the abrupt and enigmatic finish of Tony Soprano does it resonate in a selected approach after the Sudden gandolfini disappearance ?

Absolutely. The black melted, sudden and sudden, will be ambiguous, even irritating, in a creative work. In life, it is tragic.

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Jason Bailey, Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a LegendAbrams Press, April 2025, 352 pages, € 20.84