How James Gandolfini Bought Solid as Tony in ‘The Sopranos’
Sopranos creator David Scamper had one inquire of when James Gandolfini’s supervisor, Nancy Sanders, suggested him for the design of Tony Soprano: “Is he threatening ample?”
Photo: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Series by Getty
James Gandolfini was once unknown to most TV viewers when he got the design of Tony Soprano. However for these that had been a connoisseur of personality actors within the mid-’90s, he was once already in your radar. Gandolfini had made a highly efficient impact in a lot of enormous-display supporting roles, including the intimidating Lt. Bobby Dougherty in submarine thriller Crimson Tide; a detective temporarily possessed by a demon in Fallen; Geena Davis’s sweet boyfriend in Angie; a elephantine henchman named Endure who gets beaten up by John Travolta in In discovering Shorty; and, most spectacularly, the mob goon who fights Patricia Arquette to the demise — and loses — in Actual Romance. When Gandolfini showed up within the ready room of Dr. Melfi’s affirm of job within the pilot episode of The Sopranos, staring silently up at a statue of a unadorned girl, it was once definite he’d stumbled on the design that will well well engage all his abilities, plus extra he hadn’t yet tapped into.
This excerpt from Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Existence of a Epic, the original biography of the actor by critic, movie historian, and Vulture contributor Jason Bailey, charts the winding path that introduced the actor into Sopranos creator David Scamper’s sphere. The guide essentially explores its topic from the skin in, as Gandolfini was once a non-public man who only gave two corpulent-measurement solo interviews throughout his profession (one among them was once to me in my skill as a TV critic for the Superstar-Ledger). It’s spell binding to hit upon him through the eyes of folks that will well well later turn out to be his colleagues and pals. Even sooner than he grew to turn out to be properly-known, he might perhaps well well be an unpredictable, impulsive, and at events inscrutable presence.
Whereas the pilot script was once knocking around from one network to 1 other, David Scamper had been up for a job on a CBS series for Marg Helgenberger centered on the Search Security Program. He historic the Sopranos pilot script as a writing sample, which was once the plot in which it got in front of James Gandolfini’s managers, Trace Armstrong and Nancy Sanders — Helgenberger was once furthermore their shopper. CBS passed on the Helgenberger pilot, however when be conscious got around in regards to the HBO deal for The Sopranos, Sanders seen a gap for Jim. “I learn it again,” she recalls, “and I went, Oh my God, I reflect I bask in Tony Soprano.”
She called Scamper at home and suggested him as significant. He was once taking half in a Sunday-evening dinner and bottle of wine alongside with his wife. “He sounds familiar,” Scamper said. “I’m fully into having this dialog with you, however I is rarely any longer going to be conscious it. Call me the next day morning and ship me the VHS.” The following morning, a messenger delivered Jim’s reel to Scamper; he called Sanders attend at 11 a.m. “All moral, right here’s the deal,” he suggested her. “I reflect he’s ultimate. I bask in one wretchedness, and that is, Is he threatening ample?”
“David, if your only wretchedness is is he threatening ample … ,” she said, laughing. “If you said to me, ‘He’s a microscopic plump,’ or ‘He’s losing his hair,’ I could perhaps well well realize. However he’s threatening ample. Here is your guy.”
“In the movie version of The Sopranos, I even handed Robert De Niro,” Scamper said. “There was once never anybody after that, seriously, who I understanding might perhaps well well be Tony Soprano.” He’d employed casting directors Georgianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, in step with their work on the Steve Buscemi movie Bushes Lounge. “We didn’t know the leisure,” Jaffe said. “Georgianne and I had been doing honest movies; we’d never performed tv.” In 1996, they’d helped creator-director Melissa Painter cast a mission she was once workshopping on the Sundance Labs (it grew to turn out to be her 1999 design, Wildflowers) about a father and daughter. Painter suggested Gandolfini, whom she knew in my belief.
“We had only considered Jim Gandolfini play heavies,” Jaffe said, “and this father was once this hippie who was once very varied, however I understanding he was once a factual actor. I’d considered him in A Streetcar Named Need with Aida Turturro. I constantly understanding he was once no doubt factual, attention-grabbing, however I had never considered him function this extra or less thing. However it no doubt was once a lab and it was once admire, ‘Why no longer?’ He did it, and it was once broad. So I knew this varied aspect of him that I don’t reflect the overall public had considered yet, which made me know he was once succesful of so significant, because he was once a extremely broad guy.”
With Sanders pushing for him, and Walken and Jaffe in his nook, Gandolfini was once extremely happy with Scamper’s Sopranos script. “I reflect my proper words had been, ‘I could perhaps well well kick this guy moral within the ass, however I’ll never ranking cast,’” he recalled. “‘They’ll hire some fucking fairly boy.’ I understanding they’d hire, you know, one among these Irish-taking a ogle guys who’re all over TV now.” What’s extra, Gandolfini wasn’t the most attention-grabbing one up for Tony (even though, Walken famous, “everybody had to be Italian — that checklist was once prolonged, however it no doubt wasn’t that prolonged”), and everyone had to audition, first for Scamper after which for the suits at HBO. “We said, ‘No, you perhaps can furthermore serene know who he is,’” Trace Armstrong says. “Who is HBO to inquire of him to learn when ABC, which was once the massive deal then, is offering him the lead of a issue? So we said, ‘No, however we’re going so that you simply can bask in him meet David,’” and they organized a breakfast.
“At the time, I was once younger,” Gandolfini recalled, “and I stayed out gradual a lot, and I was once admire, Oh, for fuck’s sake. This guy needs to eat breakfast? This guy’s going to be a distress within the ass. So we met and we spent as a rule laughing about our mothers and our families.”
Subsequent, Gandolfini met with the powers that be at HBO, “after which he supplied to learn,” Armstrong says with fun. “Finally of us teeing it up and telling him he didn’t make a choice to.” As Jim set up it, “I was once born to play Tony … I needed it so significant I agreed to audition for it.”
Walken and Jaffe rented an audition room on 72nd Avenue, a desk and a couple of chairs, and web page up a digital camera. Jim came in, chatted with Scamper a microscopic, and began to learn. “He was once very factual,” Scamper said. However Jim had barely made a dent in it when he stopped reading and began apologizing. “I’m no longer doing this moral,” he insisted. “I didn’t put together for this moral. I’m no longer doing it moral. And I don’t need to protect out it anymore. I need to device attend attend and function it for you again.”
He supplied to device attend attend the following Friday, Scamper recalled, “after which Friday came alongside and he couldn’t device in. I divulge right here’s what we had been suggested: His mother had died.” It was once purely a delaying tactic; Santa Gandolfini had passed months earlier.
By the level Jim sooner or later felt prepared to device attend, Scamper was once attend in Los Angeles. However Walken and Jaffe had been pushing powerful for him — “He was once no doubt our authorized notion from the starting,” the latter confessed — so they flew him out to Los Angeles to build apart him on tape. “David ran the digital camera, and I learn,” Jaffe said. “And it was once VHS tapes. That’s how prolonged within the past it was once. And David and I ran attend to his home, watched it, and we each got no doubt mad.”
Nancy Sanders remembers sitting with Jim and his agent, David Brownstein, within the Century Plaza Resort restaurant shut to HBO’s headquarters. “I came to you to protect up out fucking movies,” he said. ‘“And now I’m doing an HBO series?”
Photo: Anthony Neste/Getty Images
“When he sooner or later settled down and no doubt did a reading, it was once moral glaring,” Scamper said. “There was once moral no longer any inquire of about it. He was once the guy.” However Scamper had to be definite. “It was once audition after audition — a lot of folks went up for that design,” he said. “As a topic of truth, they don’t admire you to herald one particular person — they bask in to bask in some input. So three folks had been delivered to HBO for the design of Tony, and Jim was once one among them.”
“There had been three folks attempting out for Tony,” in step with Michael Imperioli, who was once furthermore on the network take a look at, for one other design. “Jim Gandolfini, who I didn’t know; Mike Rispoli, who I was once factual pals with, who went on to play Giacomo Michael ‘Jackie’ Aprile Sr.; and one guy who regarded familiar, however I couldn’t figure out who he was once. The casting director pulled me apart and said, ‘That’s Little Steven Van Zandt wearing a wig.’”
There was once no longer an instant consensus within the room. To Susie Fitzgerald, who was once there on behalf of management-manufacturing company Brillstein-Grey, “the minute he walked within the room, I was once admire, Oh, that’s fully him.” However Scamper “took some convincing,” in step with Fitzgerald. “He loved Stevie Van Zandt.” Fitzgerald pushed powerful for Gandolfini; she recalled Scamper being concerned, “He’s a distress within the ass on web page.”
“I don’t care about that,” she answered. “Is it him?”
Per Chris Albrecht, president of HBO Usual Programming, “Rispoli was once broad. He was once funnier than Jimmy, moral thanks to the usual rhythms that he had. And we talked about it, and David said, ‘It’s a extremely varied issue for these that set up Rispoli in it or Jimmy in it, however the issue I envisioned is the issue that’s got Jimmy in it. It’s a significant darker issue with Jimmy in it.’ I reflect we sat with that for a moment. ‘Dark’ is rarely any longer no doubt a be conscious you ever need to fling for in tv, however the assorted one was once ‘extra right.’ So we cast Jimmy.”
No person was once extra bowled over than the actor himself. “This was once an incredible leap of faith,” he admitted. “I imply, it wasn’t four fairly girls folks in Ny (as in Sex and the Metropolis). This was once a bunch of fat guys from Jersey.” Privately, he wasn’t so obvious in regards to the issue or the design. Nancy Sanders remembers sitting with Jim and his agent, David Brownstein, within the Century Plaza Resort restaurant shut to HBO’s headquarters, pressing him to signal the contract and going through an 11th-hour bout of second-guessing.
“Why am I doing this?” he asked her. “I came to you to protect up out fucking movies. And now I’m doing an HBO series? I don’t even know what the bring togetherwork is!”
“Jim, listen to me,” she answered. “Here is the most attention-grabbing section of writing I’ve ever learn, whether or no longer or no longer it is TV, movie, or theater. I promise you: Here is payment doing. It’s no longer going to change the field, however it no doubt’s going to change TV.”
“Stunning,” he sighed. “Fuck it.” He signed the papers. When he broke the guidelines to Italian Movie director Roberto Monticello, Gandolfini despaired, “Oh my God, Roberto, I’m gonna be unemployed in lower than a year. Who the hell is going to hit upon a tv issue about mafiosos in Jersey?”
From Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Existence of a Epic (Abrams Press) by Jason Bailey, on sale April 29, 2025. © 2025 Jason Bailey.
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