How Michael Gandolfini channelled his late father’s greatest creation in The Sopranos prequel movie

Michael Gandolfini stepped into his late father’s shoes to play Tony Soprano in The Many Saints Of Newark and left his castmates in tears.

Michael Gandolfini always knew that appearing in the The Sopranos feature film prequel The Many Saints Of Newark was going to be a hugely emotional experience.

Not only was there the high-risk strategy of revisiting what many consider to be the greatest TV show ever made to consider, he was also stepping into the shoes of his father, the late, great James Gandolfini.

It was only at the suggestion of his manager that he agreed to try out to play the younger version of his father’s mighty creation, tortured Mafia boss Tony Soprano, in the eagerly-anticipated and long awaited return to the world created by writer David Chase.

“He was really the one to say ‘all right, you gotta go audition because you are a young actor and it’s a good cast and director and you should go up for good filmmakers’,” says Gandolfini.

Michael wasn’t even born when the first episode of the Sopranos went to air in 1999 and was just eight years old when it had its famously ambiguous, fade-to-black finale in 2007, after six seasons, 86 episodes and 21 Emmys (three for his father).

But for all The Sopranos’ accolades and its reputation of having changed the face of television, to young Michael, it was just his dad’s job.

Michael Gandolfini and Alessandro Nivola in a scene from The Many Saints Of Newark.

“I didn’t even know what it was about,” says Michael of the sprawling saga, which deftly juggled a gangster’s continuing battle to protect his New Jersey crime empire with his mental health struggles and ever-shifting relationships with family and friends.

“I think when I was like 11, I remember asking him ‘what is the show about?’. And he was like ‘ahh, it’s this mobster who goes into therapy … I don’t know’. And I was like ‘OK’. He had protected me and kept me away from all of that.”

The first time that Michael saw the show was the deep dive he knew he needed to do having won the role of young Tony in The Many Saints of Newark, which is set in the 1960s when the future crime kingpin was still an impressionable young man.

He describes the experience as “super tough” at first but says he was also was “just so blown away by just how good it was”.

James died of a heart attack in a Rome hotel room in 2013 – it was his son who had found him unconscious on the floor – so watching his legacy was always going to be a complicated and layered process for Michael, both personally and professionally.

James Gandolfini, who died of a heart attack in 2013, as Mafia boss Tony Sopranos in The Sopranos.

“It was kind of like an emotional purge of being able to watch my Dad and get all my feelings out and then it was just enjoyment,” he says.

“It was enjoying it as a piece of art and laughing and feeling proud of them all. And then on a third level, it started to become like watching a historical figure. Like if I was going to play, I don’t know … whoever … I would watch videos of them and hear their voice and look at their mannerisms and I started to see it like ‘what I gift, I have 86 hours of footage of this person’ and I started studying it like it was a real person.

“I was blown away by how talented he was and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was a little pissed, like ‘f---, he’s so good’.”

The Many Saints Of Newark director Alan Taylor says that he and Chase were both initially wary of casting the largely unknown Michael in the coveted role.

To that point he’d had a small role in Ocean’s 8 and a regular role in The Deuce, with James Franco, but they were also concerned about the weight of his father’s revered legacy on Michael’s young shoulders.

“We didn’t really know his work so the question was ‘are we asking too much of him – can he pull this off?’,” says Taylor, who won an Emmy for directing a Sopranos episode and has also worked on Mad Men, The West Wing, Boardwalk Empire and Game Of Thrones.

“And the other was more personal – ‘are we asking too much of him to step into this emotionally and to take this on and deal with his own memories of his father?’. We had to put him through the wringer – we made him come in and audition for us and he did such a great job and we realised that he was certainly up to it.”

Michael Gandolfini and Alessandro Nivola with director Alan Taylor in a scene from The Many Saints Of Newark.

Taylor recalls a dinner for the cast just before the shoot started at which Michael stood up and thanked everyone for a chance to say hello to his father again – and a chance to say goodbye again.

“There was not a dry eye in the house when he said that,” Taylor says.

“I think we were wary going in but we came out of thinking it was actually a good thing for the movie and also for the fans, because people seemed to be really responding to this choice, and also for Michael because he seemed to really appreciate it.”

After discussions with Taylor and Chase, and the hours of watching the show, it became clear to Michael that what was needed for The Many Saints of Newark was an interpretation of Tony Soprano rather than a slavish imitation of what his father had created.

The character in the prequel, set amid the New Jersey race riots of 1967, is different to the jaded, damaged 40-something who fans meet in his dressing gown on his mansion’s drive way years later.

It’s not just the age that defined Michael’s portrayal but also in the fact that he has not yet set out on a life of crime and violence and still has the chance to choose a different path than the one set by his uncle and role model, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the movie’s central character. Still, Michael’s years of living with the man who became so synonymous with Tony came in handy once the cameras were rolling.

Michael Gandolfini, Sopranos writer and creator David Chase and Alessandro Nivola at the New York premiere of The Many Saints Of Newark. Picture: Dave Allocca/StarPix

“I know how my Dad and Tony would handle emotions physically, like how does he walk, how does he talk?,” says Michael.

“Are there moments here to put in some heavy breathing or give them a glare? Little touch points to be like ‘oh yeah’ but as a whole picture, it’s not an imitation. That is what I tried to do.”

Spending time with the cast and crew on The Many Saints of Newark also give Michael the chance to see his father through the eyes of people who knew him well.

While Chase and James had a complicated, and by the end of the show fractious, relationship, the actor who could be so imposing and terrifying on screen also had a reputation for being a warm, funny, kind and generous man.

Michael says he’d wanted to be in the film industry since he was young – and was always making films and plays – but James had always declined to give him advice, preferring his role as loving parent over acting coach.

“He was always just dad to me but the love for my dad has really just been such an inspiring thing,” Michael says.

“Like you said, people remember him for being a good man and the way to make my dad proud and have his legacy live on, is for me to be my own good man and be good to people like he was. It inspires me to hear all of the stories and the kind, generous things he did because I want to grow up and continue to be a good person and be the good person he taught me to be.”

The Many Saints of Newark opens in cinemas on November 4.