Sunday's season premiere of The Sopranos marks the first fresh hour we've been able to spend with this HBO Mob classic since June. Keeping track of the families isn't easy from week to week, let alone with months in between. USA TODAY offers this quick guide to where the characters were and where they are now.
Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini)
Much of Tony's life has been consumed by a continuing skirmish between his Jersey family (the DiMeos) and the New York Lupertazzi Mob. For now, a fragile peace holds, established when Tony visited the Lupertazzi's de facto boss, Phil Leotardo, while Phil was recovering from a heart attack. The attack, perhaps, reminded Tony of his own fragile grip on mortality as he continues to recover from a near-fatal gunshot and prepares to celebrate his 47th birthday. At least when he's feeling anxious, he can still turn to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), as he has from the start.
Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco)
Carmela is still struggling to sell her spec house and still obsessing over the missing well, OK, dead Adriana. There has been a change in Carm, though. Tony's brush with death has brought Carmela closer to her husband and forced her to be more honest with herself about Tony's business and anger problems.
A.J. Soprano (Robert Iler)
Tony's lost little boy has lost another job and failed in his attempt to kill Uncle Junior at the psychiatric hospital. Now, though, he seems deeply invested in a new relationship. He's dating Blanca, a Puerto Rican woman 10 years his senior with a child and a sharp tongue, which she uses to criticize a family that doesn't take kindly to criticism.
Meadow Soprano (Jamie-Lynn Sigler)
A perpetual student who is, it often seems, discussed more than seen, Meadow is back from California. She is minus fiancι Finn, but she's still studying, this time to get into medical school.
Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli)
Tony's nephew and Carm's cousin, Christopher is married and has a baby he's about to christen. He continues to fight his various addictions, sometimes more strenuously than others. And he continues to toy with outside ventures, such as his Mob-funded film, Cleaver, a slasher flick with a central villain (Daniel Baldwin) who looks and acts suspiciously like Tony. That's a premiere party you don't want to miss.
Janice Soprano Baccalieri (Aida Turturro)
Tony's sister is planning her brother's birthday party at the family's lakeside retreat, where she's in residence with husband Bobby and daughter Nica. Marriage and motherhood have not made Janice any less passive-aggressive, nor have they tempered a penchant for playing games that's going to cause no end of trouble.
Silvio and Paulie (Steven Van Zandt and Tony Sirico)
Still loyal; still alive. Those are rare accomplishments for a DiMeo henchman.
Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni (Vince Curatola)
Many of Tony's current problems can be traced to the decline of former Lupertazzi boss Johnny Sack, an ally who promoted peace between and within the two families. Johnny, however, lost his hold on his job when he was sent to jail, and he may now lose his hold on his life.
Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent)
The heart attack that inspired Tony's peace overtures still hampers Phil, who has stepped away from active control of the family and is considering retirement. His detachment has led to a power struggle that once again threatens to shatter into open war if Phil's own unabated anger over the murder of his younger brother doesn't start the blood flowing first.
Masterful 'Sopranos': Past weighs heavily as final act opens
The Sopranos * 1/2(out of four)
HBO, Sunday, 9 ET/PT
'SOPRANOS' FINAL ACT
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
In no show is the present more infused with the past or in fear of the future than The Sopranos.
Past sins and slights haunt every action and character in this unassailable TV classic, which returns Sunday for a final nine-episode run. So brilliantly and intricately is the show played and designed, you can almost feel the weight of prior transgressions pressing in on Tony and Carm James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, whose performances separately and as a couple have been equaled but never exceeded.
Yet that realistic insistence that past be prologue is a problem as well as a pleasure for The Sopranos. Seldom has a story been richer, and never has a show arrived with higher expectations or with more self-inflicted pressures which is the cost of keeping people hanging for pretty near three years to see how the story ends.
And the wait is not over. The two episodes that open the final run are, as Sopranos episodes tend to be, masterful examples of the TV art tense, terrifically acted, carefully observed one-hour plays that delve ever more deeply into the characters while pushing the story slightly forward. They set the concluding mood and the theme, that of family issues coming to a head. But they don't do much to move us toward the conclusion, and that may not sit well with viewers who have clamored, if not for the end, at least for the end to begin.
Still, Tony clearly feels some end approaching, as his oncoming 47th birthday has left him pondering his legacy and his mortality. He has cobbled together a peace agreement with the New York Mob, but it's no more stable than his family as reflected by a chillingly amusing game of Monopoly that Tony and Carm play with Janice (Aida Turturro) and Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa). These are people, we are continually reminded, who believe in all the rules except the ones that would constrain them.
As always, humor, violence and sheer genius abound here, from the seamless way Gandolfini moves from confession to recrimination, to the way the show conveys the disorienting shock of violence through sights and sounds that disorient us. There is no glamour in The Sopranos view of the Mob, only an unrelenting, unaware, thuggish brutality.
Yet like the characters themselves, the story has been stretched to the breaking point. It seems clear The Sopranos would have done better, and been better, had it moved to its conclusion more quickly rather than lingering on stories last spring that began to challenge viewers' interest and affection.
Still, though that may not be an unreasonable demand, it is in essence a pointless one. David Chase, the driving force behind the show, moves at his own pace and weaves the story as he sees fit. He has willingly traded popularity for artistic integrity, a bargain he has been able to make because the art has so often been impeccable.
Barring some drastic change of heart on Chase's part, Tony's story is now written and done and neither praise nor complaint can alter the direction Chase has chosen.
So for now, perhaps, the wisest course is to put aside concerns and wishes for how the show should end and allow it to play out as Chase intends. Cherish the past, embrace the present and let the future take care of itself.
Family reunions can be fraught with conflict and drama, but here's one we'll really miss: After three reprieves, The Sopranos ends its eight-year run with nine final episodes that begin Sunday (9 ET/PT).
With them, the series leaves behind a rich legacy: It transformed television with its complex characters, elliptical storytelling and steadfast refusal to neatly tie up loose ends. It tested viewers' patience and rewarded their loyalty.
It sparked a wave of gritty cable series and led broadcast networks to enviously take notice and (unsuccessfully) build shows around evil men (NBC's Kingpin, CBS' Smith) even as they lost viewers.
And it helped transform HBO from a premium channel watched mostly for boxing, soft-core porn and films into a cultural touchstone.
Fan Josh Simmons of Pawleys Island, S.C., calls it simply "the greatest show of all time." Jeff Comfort of South Bend, Ind., says its depth has earned it a place among TV's biggest gems. "The Sopranos will be regarded as television literature to be watched, studied, and enjoyed as the incredible piece of work that it is," he says.
Creator David Chase, modest in discussing the show's influence, says: "People always ask me how the show changed television, and I don't really believe we have. Our primary goal was to do episodes where you couldn't figure out where things were going; we tried to make it that every episode people couldn't predict."
A 'Dickensian novel'
But when the series began in 1999, the very idea of a crime boss as TV star was anathema to networks, which stuck on the formula of likable, advertiser-friendly heroes whom viewers could root for.
"There never had been a true anti-hero at the center of a show until The Sopranos came along," says John Landgraf, president of the FX cable network. And the show "proved it can work not only as excellent television but as commercial entertainment." The Sopranos' audience peaked at more than 13 million viewers in 2002, a solid number for any major network but unheard of for a pay channel that reaches just one in three homes.
And unlike other soapy sagas, the series was structured as "a series of chapters in a long Dickensian novel," Landgraf says, that would casually abandon unresolved plotlines and abruptly revisit themes years later "using a novelistic structure to observe truths about the human condition. It all adds up to one large literary piece."
Though The Sopranos is ostensibly about a middle-aged Mafia boss navigating the twin demands of his family and his "family," at its best the show speaks universal truths about loyalty and frailty.
Says Museum of Television and Radio curator Ron Simon, "The show was able to create a professional and personal world for Tony Soprano which reflected what it was like to be a middle manager in 20th-century America."
TV historian Tim Brooks says The Sopranos' biggest influence was on Hollywood, where it heightened the "dismemberment quotient" of other prime-time series, led by CSI, which premiered 18 months later. Simon concurs that the show, despite airing on a pay-cable channel with no content restrictions, "loosened the reins" for others.
Basic cable steps in
FX was the biggest beneficiary. The network's stable of original programming is a direct descendant of The Sopranos' success, and its former executives now the top programmers at NBC and Fox often said FX's goal was to be seen as the HBO of basic cable. The Shield, with its murderous cop; Rescue Me, centered on an alcoholic, wife-abusing fireman; and Nip/Tuck, with its lying, cheating plastic surgeons, all owed a debt to Tony's crew in their raw explicitness.
Even the more rigidly censored broadcast networks spawned flawed heroes such as Fox's Dr. House and virtually every character on Lost each of whom, it has been revealed, committed murder or some other sin before being stranded on the island.
The Mob hit's effect was keenly felt at HBO itself. Arriving in January 1999, seven months after Sex and the City, "The Sopranos made us famous," HBO chairman Chris Albrecht says. "Before, we were something people had but didn't pay a lot of attention to. But this showed us as players in this medium in a way we hadn't been perceived before. It was a real turning point and a tremendous calling card for other people to come and want to do business with us."
It was also a nice piece of business. Despite a huge price tag the show now costs about $10 million an hour, nearly four times the price of a typical network drama the series has become a cash cow. HBO has so far sold 3 million DVD sets and peddled cleaned-up reruns to cable's A&E network for a record-setting $2.5 million an episode in a deal worth more than $200 million.
But the well will soon dry up, and HBO has yet to even approach The Sopranos' success with any new show that has come since.
"It's way more difficult, but not impossible" to achieve, Albrecht says. "When Sopranos went on the air, there were probably six networks making series; there's dozens now" as basic-cable networks, and creatively revived rival Showtime, have siphoned viewers.
This summer, HBO plans a record four Sunday series, including the returning Big Love, about a polygamous family, and the new John From Cincinnati, a drama about a mystical surfer. And the network may expand to a second night.
To some extent, The Sopranos' success made the show its own victim, as a whirlwind of hype and obsession split viewers into camps: those lured by mobsters and mayhem, and others who appreciated the drama of an upper-middle-class, suburban New Jersey family coping with many of the same issues that they were: aging parents, wayward children, midlife crises.
Awaiting the next whacking
Ratings fell as gaps between seasons grew longer. And the bloodlust camp grew restless with the domestic drama, devoting obsessive attention to a parlor game of predicting which character would get "whacked" next.
After the second season closed with the seaborne execution of FBI informant Big Pussy, "People started treating it like it was Survivor: 'Who's going to die?', as if every season someone had to go," says Michael Imperioli, who plays Soprano lieutenant Christopher Moltisanti. "So everything got compared to that, and you'd hear there's not enough blood, there's not enough killing, and that was never the object of the show."
Still, The Sopranos continued to earn praise. It won 18 Emmys, including best drama in 2004. Chase planned to end the show after Season 4 but extended it three times because there were stories left to tell. (Huge paydays for top producers and actors didn't hurt.)
Though he mapped out how the series would end a few years ago, he kept going because "I never finished out the (Uncle) Junior story. There were things I wanted to do with Janice Tony and A.J. Meadow. We saw them as young children, and I wanted to finish out their story as young adults, to see how it all turned out for them."
Though shooting ends this month, the bullets will fly until June 10, when The Sopranos breathes its last. Except for star James Gandolfini, cast members are as sorry as fans to see it go.
"I'm profoundly sad, surprisingly so," three-time Emmy winner Edie Falco says. "You live this character for 10 years. As pretend as it may be, it starts to get under your skin."
But some die-hards will never let the show's memory be whacked. "I will forever be a fan," Simmons says. "I love this show and everything about it, and my living room, which is covered in framed Sopranos posters and memorabilia, will make sure that the show will never end for me."
Chase says he's "honored that people feel that way." And aside from a glint of doubt when he wrote the final episode, he doesn't regret the latest and final decision to end the series.
"The show business saying is, 'keep 'em wanting more.' I'm just glad they do."
The Sopranos gang hangs out in front of the fictional meat store Satriale's. The building will be torn down after the series finale this spring.
By Janet Frankston Lorin, Associated Press Writer
KEARNY, N.J. When the pig is on the roof, people know The Sopranos are not far behind.
The life-size pig sits on an old boarded-up building that will soon come to life as Satriale's, a fictional pork store where Tony Soprano and his Jersey crew hang out on HBO's acclaimed mob drama.
As the show begins its final season on April 8, scores of Jersey businesses and residents are preparing for life without the cast and crew they have encountered over the past eight years.
The show is mostly filmed at a New York City soundstage, but many scenes are shot in the Garden State to provide a real Jersey feel. Most towns and business owners welcome The Sopranos they get to watch the filming, snap photos of the actors and even earn some money.
Many scenes have been shot in Kearny, a working-class town across the Passaic River from Newark and about nine miles west of Manhattan. Residents have learned to recognize hints that a shoot is imminent.
"When you see those signs going up on the poles when you drive down Kearny Avenue, then you know it's getting close," Kearny Mayor Alberto Santos said, referring to the fliers advising residents that streets will be closed. "And when the pig goes on the roof, you know it's really close."
And when The Sopranos are in town, you do what they say for a price.
The Irish-American Association, which occupies the building next to Satriale's, takes down its Irish flag and flies an Italian flag during filming. The association has been paid $20,000 in rental fees over the years, said Richard Dunleavy, past vice president. The town of Kearny has collected permit fees of $76,650.
"I'm sorry this will be the last season," Dunleavy said. "They will be missed."
The end of the show also will mean a different look for various Sopranos locales. The Satriale's building will be torn down and replaced with condos and a parking garage. In nearby Lodi, the Satin Dolls strip club, better known as the Bada Bing, will be renovated.
"It's an old building," said Satin Dolls general manager Nick D'Urso. "We like to keep up with current trends and keep a fresh face on the nightclub."
While Kearny is a regular spot, scouts were always looking for sites across Jersey to illustrate the scripts, said Regina Heyman, the show's location manager and a Jersey girl who grew up in Montclair. She said show creator David Chase is "avid about wanting it to be authentic. He grew up there. He wrote it for there."
The show employs four full-time scouts who drive around the state, sometimes for days, before finding a restaurant, office building or home to match what the writers dreamed up.
Scouts looked at 25 houses before they found Janet Cole's 121-year-old home, which was used for an episode in which Tony dreams he's gone to heaven and is visited by his dead cousin, played by Steve Buscemi.
"We weren't really sure if we wanted to do it and it would depend on the content of that particular episode," said Cole, who hadn't seen the show and watched DVDs to get a better sense of it. The family agreed, and had a great time watching the overnight shoot.
Other locations weren't as hard to find, such as a retirement community in West Orange called Green Hill. It became the setting for Green Grove, a fictional retirement community where Tony's mother, Livia, lived early on in the series and emerged again last season.
"I think the inspiration for Green Grove came because David Chase had his mom at Green Hill awhile ago when it first started," said Toni Davis, Green Hill's executive director.
When the scouts needed a conference room with a view of downtown Newark for an office scene, they eventually found attorney Kevin Marino, who was thrilled.
"They shot one scene and so much effort went into it," he said. "You really get a sense that a lot of hours go into just a few minutes."
There's a familiar aftermath at a half-dozen other sites around northern New Jersey where the show has filmed: photos of the actors and tales of invasion by dozens of cast and crewmembers.
They spent a day at Clear Eyes RX in Wayne, which fronted as an optical store owned by Ginny Sack's brother. Co-owner Fred Siwiec was surprised at how many technicians came in to change all the light bulbs, take measurements and hang their own posters for the merchandise.
"It was amazing to watch," he said, standing in front of photos of himself and Paulie. The business was compensated $6,000, he said.
The scouts eventually found Nori Sushi in Wayne for a scene where Carmela and Tony dine. Heyman said the script called for a specific look, and the restaurant also had to hold 75 people.
"There were plenty that didn't fit the bill of being in a strip mall," she said. "Once you find (the right place), the layout doesn't always work. A lot of sushi restaurants are small."
The show's work on location also has led to friendship and hospitality. Members of the Irish-American Association, the building next to the pork store in Kearny, have shared drinks with the cast and crew. But Dunleavy has yet to score an autograph from James Gandolfini, who plays Tony.
"Getting to Tony is like getting a meeting with the pope," he said. "So I just left him alone and hope to get my picture with him before he finishes up this job."
NEW YORK Robert Iler doesn't recall much about that summer in 1997, when at age 12 the former Pizza Hut pitchman won the role of a mobster's bratty son in the pilot episode of an edgy new cable drama.
"I just remember not wanting to be there. I wanted to be hanging out with my friends," Iler says.
Excitement built, even as veteran co-stars cautioned him that the odds were against the show ever becoming a series. "This is probably the last time you'll see any of us," he was told by Tony Sirico, who plays hot-tempered lieutenant Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri.
Ten years later, the cast of The Sopranos finally is preparing to say goodbye. Production is set to end on HBO's biggest hit and one of TV's seminal series just as nine final episodes begin airing April 8.
But not before the ties between Iler's Anthony Jr. ("A.J.") and Mob boss dad Tony take center stage, James Gandolfini, 45, and Iler, 22, reveal in their only joint interview, at a sprawling sports and studio complex on Manhattan's West Side.
"The relationship between A.J. and the parents is a very big part of the season," Gandolfini says. In burying the series after eight years and 86 episodes, creator David Chase explores the generational divide and the strange pull of the Mob "family" on the Soprano family, the heart of the series.
Last season, wayward teen A.J. dropped out of a local college, got fired from Blockbuster for stealing and was eager to stab his great-uncle Junior in retaliation for an attack that left Tony hospitalized in critical condition. In doing so, A.J. would have thrust himself into the mobster's life of crime.
For all the bravado, "Tony as a 19-year-old would have eaten A.J. as a 19-year-old alive, would've taken his lunch money," says Gandolfini, quoting a description by Sopranos writer/producer Terence Winter.
But as a parent, Tony has changed his tune.
"In the scene where he was going to go stab Uncle Junior, maybe in a different world Tony's father would have encouraged behavior like that, whereas Tony's like: 'You make me want to cry. You can't do this. I don't want you to do this for a living,' " Gandolfini says. "And (Tony) says to him, 'You're a good guy. You're a nice guy. You're not cut out for this kind of (stuff).' "
Do the actors bring any of their own upbringing to their TV personas? "I'm sure we do. My father used to swat me on the back of the head occasionally, which I did to him on the show," Gandolfini says, gesturing to Iler. "My father used to call me gogoots, which I didn't even tell David, and he wrote it into the show. I think it means eggplant." (Actually it's a squash, but colloquially it's an affectionate term for a stupid person.)
"His family is very old-world Italian, like mine," he says.
An unusually reflective Gandolfini speaks of a generational divide, calling Tony and his wife, Carmela, a different breed from his notoriously cold and psychologically abusive mother, Livia, as played by the late Nancy Marchand.
"We're better parents, but I don't think that's necessarily good in a way," Gandolfini says.
"Because we've become dependent?" Iler asks.
"Yeah, maybe," Gandolfini responds. "One way to look at it is they're going to toughen up when they have to. Another way to look at it is if you give them (grief) right away, they're used to it."
Which could just as easily apply off-screen.
The show's aura of authenticity also provides eerie parallels for the actors, who prefer not to discuss them. Iler pleaded guilty to robbery and drug possession in an incident in 2001; Gandolfini was in the midst of a messy divorce just as Tony and Carmela separated on-screen late in 2002.
"The show has a lot of real-life situations, not TV situations, so it's bound to happen in real life, too. And that can get a little weird," Gandolfini allows.
And it was just as strange for the adolescent Iler. "I was going from being at home arguing with my mom to going to work and arguing with my (TV) mom," Edie Falco. "It was weird; it was a great experience. I'm thinking about it now, how much I'm going to miss it. I don't know if it's fully hit me. This is going to be the first time since I'm 12 years old that I'm going to be unemployed."
Alone among his castmates, Gandolfini is itching to get out, saying that though he'll miss the cast and crew, the intensity of playing Tony for so long has taken its toll. "It's like you take a sponge and you wring out the sponge and then, you know, it's empty. After a while you've been to too many of the same places, and it's time to explore something new."
HBO chairman Chris Albrecht understands the three-time Emmy winner's emotions as the series winds down. "No one has had to take a character on this length of a journey, on this depth of a journey, through as long a period," he says.
And like a proud papa, Gandolfini is impressed with Iler's blossoming in upcoming episodes. (He's forbidden from describing them because of Chase's notorious penchant for secrecy.) Iler, he says, has "done incredible work this year; some of the scenes shocked me. I really was taken aback about how powerful some of the stuff was. Wow."
And Iler, who grew up in an Irish family, says that "after working with these people for 10 years, a part of me has become almost like Italian. I see myself pick up Italian mannerisms, little sayings. When you grow up with an Irish family, you say 'Cheers' I guess, but now, whenever I'm with my friends, it's like, 'Cent'ann'." It started like a joke between me and my friends, but now it's what I say."
Gandolfini grins, noting that "95% of the people on the show are Italian, really Italian." So for him, "it wasn't that big a stretch. I have an Uncle Al who reminds me of Uncle Junior. The only difference is the Mob stuff."
As for The End the long-awaited and much-speculated-about conclusion to the often-violent drama the series' final scene was shot last week at an ice-cream parlor in Bloomfield, N.J. The filming attracted throngs of nostalgic onlookers, although other scenes remain to be filmed before the series wraps its production in mid-April.
Betting sites are laying odds on which regular characters get whacked before it's all over and which loose ends are tied up. On that front, don't count on too many, thanks to the unconventional interests of creator David Chase.
But after all that has come before, the series finale "makes sense," says Michael Imperioli, who plays Soprano deputy (and cousin) Christopher, though, like life, "it's never really cut-and-dried and clean."
Adds Falco, Tony's wife, Carmela: "It's as unpredictable as everything else in this show."
Fans continue to be frustrated specifically by Chase's refusal to revisit the whereabouts of Valery, the Russian mobster last seen in "Pine Barrens," a beloved third-season episode in which Christopher and Paulie get lost in the Jersey woods.
"David has a vision of what he wants to do; he's not going to do something to have a nice clean ending, to have the audience satisfied that the Russian guy" reappears, Gandolfini says.
As the cast finished the final "table read," a run-through in which actors read through the script, "we all kind of sat there," he says. "I think for five minutes nobody said anything. It just kind of felt satisfying. Nobody was like, 'Whaaaa?' "
The actor had higher expectations than anybody: "I didn't want it to go out like something I didn't like. And I should have known he wouldn't do that."
When it ends, Iler has nothing lined up yet, but he says, "I want to start working right away." Gandolfini, who starred in a few films during the Sopranos run, plans to take some time off; he also is producing an HBO documentary about American soldiers wounded in Iraq.
But he's no longer sentimental about Tony Soprano, the character with whom he'll be forever indelibly linked: "No more beatings for a while and no more yelling for a while will be good. But I don't know what else I'm going to (expletive) play."
NEW YORK David Chase looks like a nice guy. The 61-year-old television writer and producer is slight, wry and direct. But with a mere phone call, he strikes fear in the heart of actors -- after all, his rap sheet is a mile long.
As creator and executive producer of the beloved, violent "Sopranos," Chase has sent character after character to his or her demise, held up for sacrifice to the gods of taut, uncompromising drama.
Five of the actors who were whacked by Chase in their previous fictional life on the HBO mob drama, sat down with their executioner Wednesday night at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York.
Steve Buscemi (Tony Blundetto), Drea de Matteo (Adriana La Cerva), Vincent Pastore (Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero), David Proval (Richie Aprile) and Annabella Sciorra (Gloria Trillo) reflected on their fate in a panel discussion that also included "Sopranos" executive producer Terence Winter and was moderated by Bryant Gumbel.
"It's not a big deal to me," Chase stated flatly at the start. "These are not real people."
Their deaths came in a variety of ways: A shotgun blast on a country porch, offing in the woods, execution at sea, a bullet to the head over dinner and suicide off-screen -- all endings woven into the often-ugly fabric of New Jersey mob life depicted in "The Sopranos." The show, which began in 1999, starts its final season April 8.
The actors all said they have come to understand the reasons for their character's killings as befitting the show's grim reality.
"What are you going to do, put him in witness protection? That's NBC," said Pastore, whose character was discovered to be a police informant.
But while the deaths are obviously fictional, they can also be a severe blow to an actor's career and happiness. Getting the bad news from Chase can be shocking.
"I begged," said Sciorra, who played a depressed lover of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) who killed herself.
Proval's character was dispatched by Janice Soprano (Aida Turturro) after Aprile smacked her. Having learned of his fate, Proval received another call from Chase and asked, "Is this the governor's office? Is there a reprieve?"
Buscemi was scheduled to remain for two seasons, but his arc was cut short after his character, a loose-cannon cousin of Tony's, committed a murder Chase afterward realized would require comeuppance. Chase called it "a blunder."
"I was really, really sad," said Buscemi. "That's really just about missing the greatest job I've ever had."
Buscemi could be considered a pro at being murdered; he's developed a reputation for portraying characters that die, from "Fargo" to "Reservoir Dogs."
For de Matteo the conclusion of her character was especially painful since "The Sopranos" had done so much for her career. She alluded to difficulty she's had since leaving the HBO show -- she went on to the NBC sitcom "Joey," which concluded last year.
"They killed me on HBO, and then I went to NBC to commit complete suicide," said de Matteo, drawing a roomful of laughter. "I can't lie. I was still in love with Adriana."
For her final, tearful scenes, de Matteo said she channeled her real-life grief, thinking: "My career is over, oh my God!"
Each of the actors were able to take refuge in leaving with, as Proval said, "a top-notch exit." Chase explained that he's proud no character has ever died "face down in a bowl of linguini." He said the deaths come as the story dictates -- that characters aren't lined up "like cannon fodder."
Buscemi, de Matteo, Pastore, Proval and Sciorra all showed that the wound from being whacked still smarts, even years later. But their abiding love for "The Sopranos" was abundantly clear, and the evening conversation together long after-the-fact was, as Proval said, "like therapy."
