“He wasn’t Jim, he was Tony”: Real Secret Behind James Gandolfini and Edie Falco’s Delicious Chemistry in The Sopranos Will Come as a Huge Shock to Fans

HBO’s The Sopranos, starring James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, and more, is popularly regarded as one of the greatest and most influential TV shows of all time. The series is often credited with starting the Second Golden Age of Television. Created by David Chase, the story of The Sopranos follows an Italian-American mobster, Tony Soprano, who struggles with balancing his family life with his life as a leader of a criminal organization. His challenges are explored during his therapy sessions with his psychiatrist.

The success and love fans have for The Sopranos is unmatched to date, and in 2013, the Writers Guild of America dubbed the show the ‘best-written TV series of all time’. Edie Falco, in an interview, shared the admiration she had for co-star and on-screen husband James Gandolfini.

The Sopranos actress Edie Falco remembers her on-set relationship with now-late actor James Gandolfini

Actress Edie Falco starred on HBO’s The Sopranos as Carmela, the wife of late actor James Gandolfini’s character Tony Soprano, for six seasons. The actress was one of the favorite characters on the show and was highly appreciated for her work. Gandolfini passed away in 2013 at the age of 51 after he suffered a heart attack in Rome.

In her interview with The Guardian, the actress recalled how young the two of them were when they played Tony and Carmela on-screen. She said they were kids at the time, and neither of them knew what they were doing, but somehow they worked in the same way. The actress, however, revealed that the two of them weren’t exactly how fans would have assumed them to be on set. She said,

I adored Jimmy, but we didn’t hang out a lot. So when I looked into his face, he wasn’t Jim; he was Tony.

Falco joked that being married to Gandolfini on-screen for eight years was the longest intimate relationship she’s had. She added that she is certain that people who have watched the show or are now introduced to the show think of her as an embattled wife. She opened up to People in 2021, talking about the late actor;

We had such a strangely specific, similar way that we work and a similar background. I don’t know how to explain this. We were just regular middle-class suburban kids who were never supposed to become famous actors. He was totally un-actor-y and was incredibly self-deprecating, and he was a real soulmate in that regard.

The actress added that they did not spend a lot of time talking about the scripts, but working with the late actor felt like two kids playing in the sandbox, completely immersed in their imaginary world. She also added that an individual can walk away as a better actor simply by doing a scene with James Gandolfini.

Edie Falco compares her characters Hillary Clinton to Carmela Soprano

The actress played Hillary Clinton in Ryan Murphy’s Impeachment: American Crime Story, which is Murphy’s take on President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. She joked and shared with the publication that she is certain that Murphy picked her to play Hillary Clinton after he remembered that Edie Falco can do fight scenes with husbands.

She went on to draw comparisons between Hillary Clinton and Carmela Soprano, who are women married to powerful men with definite self-control problems. Falco noted,

I don’t know how Hillary could have gotten through the day if she let herself know what her husband was doing and Carmela’s whole life was in denial. If she had thought about what her husband did to make money, she would have blown up the whole family.

However, she added that while Hillary Clinton was into public service, Carmela wanted a house, kids, and money. The actress recalled that her playing Carmela for eight years almost made the character a part of her as she started behaving like Carmela as well. She shared that David Chase had called her up, asking her if she could do a monologue as Carmela for his Sopranos prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark. She said,

And then, just like that, I was Carmela again, which felt so crazy because I’m such a different person now to who I was then.

The monologue didn’t make it to the movie, and the actress didn’t seem to mind that because she had fun shooting the part. She added that she couldn’t care less about the monologue being cut. Impeachment: American Crime Story premiered with 10 episodes in 2021 and received positive reviews. The show is available to stream on Disney+.

The Sopranos is available to stream on Hulu.