Sopranos Prequel Movie: Edie Falco Filmed Carmela Scene for The Many Saints of Newark — Why It Got Cut
If you thought you might somehow spot Edie Falco as Carmela in the upcoming Sopranos movie prequel, you can fuhgeddaboudit. And yet it almost happened.
Written by The Sopranos creator David Chase and set in the late 1960s and early ’70s, The Many Saints of Newark — which hits HBO Max and theaters on Friday, Oct. 1 — in large part follows “Gentleman” Dickie Moltisanti (played by Alessandro Nivola), the father of The Sopranos‘ Christopher (played on the HBO series by Michael Imperioli). Tony Soprano is played as a teenager in the movie by the late James Gandolfini’s own son, Michael.
Yet despite the film being set decades into the past, Falco did suit up for it as Carmela.
“Not to give away too much,” The Many Saints Of Newark director Alan Taylor told NME, “but when you make a movie, you’re not exactly sure the final shape it’s going to be and we, believe it or not, shot a few things that included other cast members.
“We had Edie come in and she dressed up as Carmela and we shot something with her, and it wound up not being in the final movie,” Taylor continued. “But it was a great excuse to see her again.”
Though Taylor did not detail the narrative device through which Carmela would have appeared, clearly in a “future” scene (Tony’s funeral, perhaps?), it sounds like it would have set the stage for the prequel’s look-back.
“There was some confusion as to how best launch the movie, how to start the movie,” the director told NME. “So we tried a few things and that was one of them…. [Y]ou’ll see that we begin it in a very different way now, but that wasn’t always the idea.”
Falco can currently be seen (though doesn’t say much) as First Lady Hillary Clinton in Impeachment: American Crime Story, airing Tuesdays at 10/9c on FX.
Will you be watching The Many Saints of Newark when it makes its HBO Max and theatrical premiere? (Also, be sure to check out Alan Sepinwall’s expert, in-depth coverage of the prequel at our sister site Rolling Stone.)
I cannot wait to see this. Although there’s not much to go on yet, what there is really seems to have captured the feel of the series.
Hope they still find a way to release this deleted footage. Would love to see the old characters again.