Few parts have reached the same heights in television as James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano. The Sopranos was appointment TV series, and 13 years after the series ended. The Many Saints of Newark, a promising film, will be shown to the audiences this fall, with Michael Gandolfini succeeding his father as a young Tony.
"My dad didn't want me to see Tony Soprano—the violence, the angry, the mean. Of course I was on set and would visit him when he was free, but I had never watched the show... I never knew Tony Soprano. I only knew my dad."
Michael spent summers with his dad on the Jersey Shore. "Because he was beloved down there. I would get jobs I was unqualified for at only eight years old, like working at a body shop." When Michael was 14, his father died of a heart attack while on vacation in Rome.
A football injury sent Michael to try out for high school plays. "I'd gone to acting to get myself through after my dad passed away. Honestly, I didn't like it at first, but it brought something out." Two managers took a chance and sent him to his first-ever acting. They called the next day: "You're the right one!" He played Joey Dwyer and calls it "an incredible time of failing and learning and getting my sea legs."
"It was really hard to watch my dad," he says. "I recorded four hours of his long speeches with Melfi and walked around New York with them constantly, constantly, constantly playing in my ear."
Three months later, he got the offer. In Cherry, Michael plays the hometown friend of Holland's bank robber with PTSD (创伤后应激障碍). "Not playing the Italian New York kid, having them believe in me and allow me to play such a complicated, beautiful role was such a gift." Looking back, he says, "My dad constantly told me, if I'd ask a question about acting, 'I'm not your acting coach. I'm your dad,' which I really appreciate now."
