The showrunner says he was annoyed by the amount of fans that wanted to see Tony Soprano ‘face down in linguini’
The Sopranos’ legacy is inseparable from its iconic, and frustratingly ambiguous, final scene: a fade to black that left the fate of its main character, James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, up for endless debate. In a new podcast for the Hollywood Reporter, however, the show’s creator David Chase has opened up about what he originally had in mind for the character, and how he feels about fans’ reactions to the finale.
Asked about an apparent slip-up during an interview for the 2018 book The Sopranos Sessions — which saw him claim that he “had that death scene in mind for years before” — Chase remains characteristically vague, refusing to confirm that he was talking about what happened after the blackout ending of the 2007 episode.
In fact, he goes on to state that he was talking about a completely different scene, which would have featured in an alternate (and presumably more straightforward) ending. “The scene I had in my mind was not that scene,” he says. “Nor did I think of cutting to black.”
“I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed.”
However, Chase does drop more hints about Soprano’s fate when he talks about the inspiration behind the eventual ending. “I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant,” he says. “It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.”
In any case, Chase was surprised about fans’ reaction to the last episode, adding: “I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar.” He also found it “annoying”, he says, that so many people wanted to see Tony killed on-screen. “That bothered me.”
“They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years, and I know he’s a criminal, but don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way. Don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years.’ That bothered me, yeah.”
This year, David Chase followed The Sopranos with the prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, starring James Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, as a younger Tony Soprano. The showrunner is also reportedly in talks with HBO about a prequel TV series, which would likely take place between the timelines of the film and the original show.