The final series of The Sopranos has started in the US, but even the cast don't know the story, reports Seán O'Driscoll in New York
James Gandolfini is peering at me, his huge hooded eyes looking directly into mine; his large, square hands pressed on the small of my back. "What?" he demands, squinting his eyes in incomprehension as Tony Soprano does so many times whenever he is vexed by an underling. I stumble to repeat the question, not sure if my nervousness is brought on by movie star James Gandolfini, mob boss Tony Soprano, or the legion of PR hacks, security men and flunkies who follow silently in his wake.
"I wanted to know how your character develops this season." His eyes bulge wide. "Ohhhhhhhhh!" he cries, as Tony Soprano has exclaimed so many times from the breakfast table when he hears something outrageous from Anthony Junior. I can feel his hand release from my back. His entourage exclaim in unison, like courtesans who have heard an obscenity in the company of Louis XVI.
Gandolfini turns and walks away, looking back accusingly. "You've blown it!" one of the security men informs me as a PR woman turns on me: "You're not supposed to ask that!" she intones, as if I had just casually asked the Pope if I could see his underwear.
Welcome to the party (at the Museum of Modern Art) to celebrate the return of The Sopranos for this, the sixth and last season (bar an additional eight "bonus" episodes). All over the covers of New York magazines and newspapers, the cast of The Sopranos stare blankly out, each publication jostling for some titbit of information that might reveal something, anything, about the most closely guarded secret in television history.
In fairness to Gandolfini, he was a good sport earlier in the night, talking about his bond with "my on-screen and real-life crew on The Sopranos. The guys keep this thing from getting way over anyone's head. As soon as someone looks about to crack under the pressure, they bring the thing back to a level that all of us can understand. That's the engine that drives this show," he says.
As I watch him get into a limo across the road, to be driven to a Tribeca nightclub, I am consoled by Jerry Adler, who plays Tony's mentor, Jewish loan-shark and mob boss Hesh Rabkin.
As avuncular and smiling as he is on screen, Adler says he still doesn't know his character's fate for sure, even after approaching one of the writers during the party. "I was just sitting down with one of the writers and he won't tell me anything!" He stabs his finger in the air just as Hesh does when making a point about a late loan payment. "They won't tell me anything, nothing at all!" A few days later, the American audience discovers Hesh is the first victim in the new series, beaten up and his son-in-law almost killed for running loan sharks in an area controlled by Phil Leotardo, acting boss of Johnny Sack's New York family.
As Hesh's involvement is stepped up in the new series, I'm curious to know whether he studied up on Meyer Lansky, the best-known of the Jewish mob bosses.
His face lights up. "Yes, I did actually. It's not like I was a fan of his but I do know a lot about him. But Hesh could never be that big! His character was written about a man named Levine, who was a music publisher. That's who Hesh really is. David Chase [Sopranos writer and producer] told me about him, I didn't know who he was." The similarities between Chase and Tony Soprano are unmistakable. They both love therapy and have pessimistic, angst-ridden personae - and it is Chase, like Tony, who decides who lives or dies. At The Sopranos's Silvercup Studios they call it "the Pussy factor" after Tony's seemingly untouchable best friend who was killed off at the height of his popularity.
'I don't want to be whacked before the end of the season," pleads Adler, but he seems happy with his film career. "I just finished a movie called In her Shoes, with Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine," he says, raising his eyebrows. "I play Shirley MacLaine's boyfriend, I get to dance with Shirley MacLaine! I'm also doing a movie with Meryl Streep called Prime. It's coming out now, so even if I get whacked, which I don't want to happen, there's something out there."
As he is thinking it through, I meet Michael Imperioli, who plays the hapless but increasingly powerful Christopher Moltisanti, on whose chemically injected shoulder Tony has placed the future of the Sopranos family. In real life, Imperioli talks much like Christopher, raising his bushy eyebrows and pulling his head back when queried. "After the Sopranos?" he says with a sly grin.
"I'm just trying to live through this. I honestly don't know after that. Every day of filming, you're waiting for that call from David Chase to say it's over. You don't know. I got a film about a Paul Auster book coming up but everything is wide open." Christopher is searching for new love in this series after his fiancee, Adriana, was murdered for being an FBI informant. His character is adrift in season six; now a captain in the Sopranos crime family but devastated by thwarted dreams.
Christopher, like so much of the Sopranos, is an upturned version of Imperioli's character in Martin Scorsese's gangster classic, Goodfellas. "You can't escape it, it's everywhere in the Sopranos," he says. The Scorsese classic is also present in Frank Vincent, who was beaten half to death in Goodfellas before being shoved into the boot of a car but who does his own boot shoving in The Sopranos as the psychotic mob captain, Phil Leotardo.
In season six, to Tony's despair, Phil has been elevated to acting boss of the New York family, from which he has enough power to muscle in on the New Jersey mob's construction contracts. Vincent stretches out a hand to greet me. His silver hair is rigid as cement, his skin a perfect snubbed olive. Of all the imposters in The Sopranos, Vincent is the only one who never seems to put down the script when the cameras stop rolling. "I got a new book coming out, it's called A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man," he says, in a gravelly, tough-guy voice. He reaches into his pocket. "In fact, I'll even show you what it looks like", but he can't find it. "Jesus," he says. "A few glasses of wine and I can't remember anything."
Phil is possibly the most despicable of The Sopranos characters and has so far been offered no redeeming features. I wonder if, like some of the others, he gets abuse from strangers on the streets. He looks me directly in the eye. "Do I get abused? Do think you could abuse me?" He is not smiling. I could have a go, I tell him. "Oh, you could, hoh," he says, before averting his gaze to my tape recorder. "No, I don't get abused," he says suddenly.
He tells me of an interesting tradition in The Sopranos. Whenever a character is killed off, there's a party for them in a small restaurant in Little Italy. Any truth to rumours that there will be a party for Vincent in season six? "Come on, I never get whacked, I'm the whacker," he says.
Nearby, I spot Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who plays Tony's spoilt daughter, Meadow, and who has become one of the most disturbingly thin actresses I have ever seen. While her character is developing into an independent woman, she is taking on the appearance of a weak little girl, her hollow cheeks sunken into her face, squeezing out the healthy glow of the earlier seasons. Before I can approach, she has left with four people around her.
John Ventimiglia plays Tony's lifelong friend, restaurant owner Artie Bucco. In real life, he has Artie's pleasing manner and nods his head enthusiastically when he's trying to make someone understand his point. He is much smoother looking than Artie. His hair is cut tight, so he doesn't have Artie's desperate few sprigs sticking up through his bald patch. Ventimiglia is wearing designer sunglasses and a sharp suit that just wouldn't work on Artie Bucco.
"I'm getting more into music, I love that," he says of his post-Sopranos exist strategy. "I'm also working on a project with (Oscar-winner) Olympia Dukakis. She's a fantastic lady, just amazing," he says, flashing a huge grin.
I get the feeling that there is a lot of Artie's willingness to please in John Ventimiglia. So what is the secret of Artie's seemingly unbreakable friendship with Tony Soprano, even after Tony blew up the kitchen of the restaurant and Artie tried to have an affair with Christopher's ill-fated fiancee, Adrianna? "I think it's just the bond of time," he says. "It's like when you were at school and one guy goes off to become a doctor and another goes off to be a circus clown. They met 20 years later and it's as if nothing has happened. That's Tony and Artie; doctor and circus clown, I'm just not sure which is which."
As he climbs into a limo, I wonder what will happen after The Sopranos finally folds. What will happen to the legions of fans, the actors, the writers, the Mafia and psychotherapy culture of The Sopranos that has become so much part of American life? For some answers, turn to Matt Servitto, who plays the affable, but cunning, FBI agent, Dwight Harris, charged with bringing down Tony Soprano.
In season six, he is just back from Pakistan, where he was helping in the war on terror, and retakes his position in New Jersey. In real life, Servitto is busy positioning himself in a new family-based Irish-American gangster series, which has become the hot new concept for studios hoping to cash in on the demise of The Sopranos, without facing the accusation of being Sopranos imitators. Servitto's show, on Showtime TV, is called Brotherhood, and stars Irish actor Fionnuala Flanagan as the mother of two men, one an organised crime leader, the other a politician. It's based on the story of James "Whitey" Bulger, the former leader of Irish-organised crime in Boston, and his brother, Billy, the former president of the Massachusetts Senate.
"We wrapped the end of last year. They were going to go with it before the end of The Sopranos but decided to hold it until after. The writing was exquisite and I think it's going to pick up some of The Sopranos's audience," says Servitto, who plays an Italian-American politician, the nemesis of the Billy Bulger character.
"It's ironic that I keep playing all these Italian characters," he says. "I'm mostly Irish, despite my name. My mother is all Irish - Mary Ellen Moore from Donegal." Unlike mobster Frank Vincent, Servitto does get abuse from people on the streets. "Oh my God, absolutely. I'm the bad guy in The Sopranos," he says. "They're murdering people and running drugs out of the club and extortion and racketeering and I'm trying to stop it all and people hate me for it. Now I'm in an Irish drama. It might get even worse."
The new series of The Sopranos will start on RTÉ sometime before the summer.