THE TONY-LOSING ACTOR

Gandolfini says he has happily buried the 'Sopranos' character who ate at him

Friday, June 08, 2007

BY FRAZIER MOORE
Associated Press
From the Newark Star-Ledger



There was no decisive moment, no seismic shift, no ceremony when James Gandolfini put "The Sopranos" behind him. But he has. Comfortably.

"I was told that it would be a transition," he said and shook his head. "Not much. It's very calming to move on."

In a rare interview last week, Gandolfini reflected on how his relationship with his character soured over time and how he'll miss the writing, but not the grinding work, of one of the most praised series in television history.

Gandolfini has played gangster-in-therapy Tony Soprano -- earning raves, clout and unsought celebrity -- since the debut of the HBO drama in January 1999. The only piece of unfinished business is the finale, which appears Sunday at 9 p.m. and brings to a close a saga as powerful and oddly relatable as anything ever seen on TV.

"Sopranos" fans surely will be left wanting more. But not Gandolfini.

"The character has been with me for so long," the 45-year-old actor said, "it's a relief to let him go."

For 86 episodes, Gandolfini submerged himself in the fiendish, tormented character. He channeled the dark world of series creator David Chase. He was regularly summoned to his own psychic danger zone. All in all, the experience was "wearing," he says.

There was a physical toll, also. "The Sopranos" revolves around Tony, which meant Gandolfini had an exhausting workload.

"But in a way, being tired helped me play the character. If the guy had to look good and be handsome and happy, the hours we worked would certainly not help. They helped me a great deal," he said with a laugh. "I was allowed to be grumpy and tired and look like (garbage)."



Whatever awaits Tony Sunday night -- he was last seen atop a bed in a safe house, an assault weapon in his lap, on guard for an attack by hit men from New York -- Gandolfini said he has already laid the fictional New Jersey mob boss to rest.

Time after time, Gandolfini felt a sense of the end at Silvercup Studios in Queens and on locations such as Tony's home turf in Essex County. All during April, a member of the large "Sopranos" cast would shoot his or her last scene with Gandolfini and depart. Then the star would shoot a last scene with another cast member, who would disappear.

"There wasn't any grand finale," he said -- then suddenly remembered his last scene with Steven Van Zandt, who played Tony's loyal consigliere Silvio since the beginning.

"This is no indication of my feelings toward anyone else, but, for some reason, that really hit me when he left. Wow!"


DEFLECTING CREDIT

Gandolfini, who recently signed a production deal with HBO, reflected on "The Sopranos" while taking a break from screening footage for a documentary he's making about U.S. soldiers who recover from near-fatal injuries in Iraq.

Consenting to an interview at HBO headquarters in New York, the famously media-shy actor was down-to-earth and deferential, yet was a formidable presence even without Tony's cockiness and mobster cred. His voice, while reflecting his New Jersey background (he was raised in Bergen County), was richer, more robust than Tony's astringent delivery.



Nursing coffee from a foam cup, he spent nearly an hour in agreeable give-and-take, drawing the line only when one too many questions delved into his acting technique: "Oh, please! Who gives a (damn)?" he scoffed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be abrupt."

He missed no chance to deflect credit toward his colleagues.

"I might be in a lot of scenes, but the crew is in every scene," he pointed out. "The crew is there 16 hours a day, every day.

"And the cast totally propped me up in many scenes. After three or four scenes sometimes I was adrift, and because (the editor) could cut to such other good actors, they were there to help me."


SPARRING PARTNERS

It was a two-way street, according to Michael Imperioli, who played Tony's hothead nephew Christopher, now dead (thanks to Tony's coldhearted intervention after a car crash a few episodes ago).

"Every time you go and do a scene with this guy," Imperioli said at the start of the season, "he manages to give 105 percent. That rubs off. That makes you work harder."

"I had the greatest sparring partner in the world, I had Muhammad Ali," said Lorraine Bracco, who, as Tony's psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi, went one-on-one with Gandolfini in their penetrating therapy scenes. "He cares what he does, and does it extremely well."

Saying goodbye to the crew and his co-stars was harder than saying goodbye to Tony, Gandolfini conceded.



Also hard: no more of those scripts. "Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes," he said. "It's a ride that I was along on, with everybody else."

And like everybody else, he couldn't help feeling appalled by Tony's brutish misbehavior. After shooting a scene in which Tony did something despicable, Gandolfini would sometimes upbraid his own character.

"I would say, God, what a --!"

Upon making this unpublishable outburst, Gandolfini helpfully added a family-friendly version: "What a jerk!"

So did he like this jerk who was part of him for so long?

"I used to," he said. "But it's difficult toward the end. I think the thing with Christopher might have turned the corner."

That was a soulless display: Fed up with his nephew's shortcomings, Tony pinched shut the nostrils of the gravely hurt Christopher, ensuring he would die inside the wrecked vehicle.

Gandolfini thought a moment, and more of Tony's depraved ideas came to mind: "Maybe the gambling thing with Hesh. And maybe the thing with Tony Sirico (as Paulie Walnuts) on the boat.

"It's kind of one thing after another. Let's just say, it was a lot easier to like him before than in the last few years."

Back then, maybe it wasn't so easy for Gandolfini to like himself. Early on, his kinship with Tony mostly stemmed from "that infantile temper that I certainly possessed much more of when I was younger."

Meanwhile, the writers fleshed out Tony by cribbing from Gandolfini -- in particular, his temper.



"In the first year, maybe they would see that sometimes when I have anger, it's very funny. So they go with that. When I break something, it's funny. So they're gonna put it in again. And then I realize that I'm continually breaking things. So then I'm getting more angry because I have to continue breaking things. And then they decide, 'Well, we've broken enough (stuff).'

"It was a learning process for all of us, I think."

All in the service of David Chase's vision.


HOOKED

Pantomiming the pull Chase exerted over him like everything on "The Sopranos," Gandolfini playfully hooked his index finger in the corner of his mouth as if he were a trout at the end of Chase's line.

A decade ago, Gandolfini was certainly hooked when he read Chase's pilot script. A character actor in his mid-30s who had grown up in Park Ridge, he knew Tony was a role he was born to play. He also realized the cards were stacked against a beefy, balding, little-known actor.

But four years earlier, he had made a brief appearance in Tony Scott's comically bloody thriller, "True Romance," in a two-fisted confrontation with its star, Patricia Arquette. That performance won him his audition.

Watching "True Romance" also provided Edie Falco with her first peek at the actor who would play her husband in "The Sopranos."

"I sort of knew the name James Gandolfini," recalled Falco. "Then I watched the film, and he's in a scene where he beats the living daylights out of a woman. I thought, 'Ohhhhhhh, okay. Welllll, let's see how this goes.'"

And how did it go? "It was maybe the most perfect working relationship," said Falco, who has won three Emmy Awards as Carmela Soprano.

Now it's over. One concluding episode, shrouded in secrecy, remains to be shown. The interiors of the Soprano home have been struck from Studio X at Silvercup. And Gandolfini, now done with Tony, is looking ahead to other roles, perhaps as Ernest Hemingway in a film he's developing for HBO.

"I don't even think I've proven myself yet," he said. "The Tony character was from New Jersey, I'm from New Jersey -- there's not a lot of stretching going on here."

Then he paused and reconsidered. "In some ways, there is. In a lot of ways. But I have yet to begin the fight, I think."