How David Chase found the perfect cast for his 'Sopranos' prequel ‘The Many Saints of Newark’
As the creator of HBO’s seminal Mafia series “The Sopranos,” David Chase is keenly aware that heavy lies the head that wears the crown. It was mob kingpin Tony Soprano himself who told his consigliere Silvio, “All due respect, you got no f—ing idea what it’s like to be number one.”
Director Alan Taylor and creator/writer/producer David Chase on the set of “The Many Saints of Newark.”Arriving nearly 14 years after “The Sopranos” finale’s smash-cut to black, the film — directed by series veteran Alan Taylor — is set in the late 1960s, as Newark, N.J., is roiled by racial violence and rival gangs go to war for dominance.
A Mafia soldier and the father of Michael Imperioli’s pivotal series regular Christopher Moltisanti, Dickie was always a somewhat mysterious figure in “Sopranos” lore. On the show, Tony spoke of him being a mentor, a friend and “a legend.” But details of his life were scant, and fans have long debated whether the story Tony told Christopher of how he died in the 1970s — gunned down outside his home by a police detective — was true.
“We went through dozens, probably hundreds, of actors that we read for Tony,” says Lambert. “There were some that were good but there just wasn’t that spark, like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the guy.’ ”After auditioning twice for the role, Gandolfini emerged as not just a good choice but thechoice. Beyond his physical resemblance to his father, Chase was struck by how the younger Gandolfini, who threw himself into an in-depth study of “The Sopranos,” captured the charming side of the future mob boss.
“Who was this girl Johnny Soprano married?” Chase says. “Why did he want to marry her if she was so nuts and she was not a raving beauty? What’s going on there? We wanted to delve into that. Finding the original Livia was very difficult, but casting Vera was a no-brainer.”To play Tony’s scheming, perpetually aggrieved uncle, portrayed in the original series by Dominic Chianese, Chase was drawn to Stoll, who had caught his eye on an episode of the Amazon drama series “The Romanoffs.
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