Gandolfini Thought He'd Cash the Pilot and Move On. Two Months Later, De Niro Was the Mobster in Therapy.
When The Sopranos first aired in January 1999, people weren't sure what to expect. Two months later, in March, Robert De Niro starred in Analyse This, a mafia comedy about a mob boss who, like Tony Soprano, seeks the support of a therapist.
Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby “Bacala” Baccalierri, recalls a conversation with the late James Gandolfini, the man who played Tony Soprano. By that account, Gandolfini expected to shoot the pilot, pick up the money for it and move on to the next thing. The coincidence is a useful corrective to hindsight: the mobster-on-the-couch premise wasn't obviously the future of television in early 1999, it was something a De Niro comedy was already doing.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
What I like is how unromantic the origin story is. Shoot the pilot, take the cheque, move on — that is the least auspicious beginning a great drama could have, which is exactly why it's believable.
The De Niro film cuts against the legend in another way. If a comedy already had a mob boss on a therapist's couch two months after the premiere, then the show wasn't obviously inventing anything — it was a familiar premise given room to breathe.