The actor recalled first getting hold of the show’s script: ‘Is this a comedy? Is this a spoof? What is this?’
Michael Imperioli, AKA Christopher from The Sopranos, has opened up about his time playing the drug-abusing gangster in the hit series in a new interview. Speaking to The Guardian, he explained how, when he first got hold of the script, he wasn’t aware of the show’s now-infamous creator David Chase and, based on his first read, he wasn’t sure if The Sopranos was any good, wondering: “Is this a comedy? Is this a spoof? What is this?”
Imperioli went for an audition that he was convinced he’d messed up, as “it didn’t seem like I was impressing (Chase) at all – but I didn’t really care. It wasn’t like I was auditioning for Scorcese”. Nevertheless, he was offered the job, which he accepted after some deliberation.
The 55-year-old actor shared some other amusing anecdotes about his time on the show, including writing off a $60,000 Lexus on his first day on set. Imperioli, who didn’t have his license, was asked to drive backwards while talking to his on-screen boss. “I thought, ‘How hard could it be? You’re on a set, they’re gonna block off traffic’,” he said.
Although he got away with it at first, he was then asked to drive at double speed. “Boom, right into one of the trees, airbags go off, Jim’s (Gandolfini’s) head snaps back, smoke everywhere. I’m thinking, ‘This guy is the star of the show, they’re gonna fire me’.”
He elaborated on the close friendship that developed between him and Gandolfini, fondly recalling one time when they shot a body disposal scene together. “We had to throw his body off a cliff and it was out in the woods,” Imperioli said. “It took a long time to set up so we went back into the trailer and started drinking – and drank a lot.” As it turned out, they both got so drunk the crew were worried they’d fall off the cliff during the shoot, “so they chained us to trees and covered the chains with leaves – that way we could go to the edge of the cliff and throw the body off.”
The actor also spoke about Gandolfini’s relationship with the fame that went hand-in-hand with the show and how, living in New York, he lost all of his privacy: “You know, you’re on the street a lot, he didn’t blend into the background – he stood out, he was a big guy – it was Tony Soprano walking around town.”
In other Sopranos news, David Chase recently opened up about the notorious ending to the series, what he originally had in mind for Tony, and how he feels about fans’ reactions to the finale – and revealed he was annoyed by the amount of fans that wanted to see Tony ‘face down in linguini’.
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.