Edie Falco on The Sopranos, motherhood – and the secret appeal of Pete Davidson

He’s known for his famous girlfriends as much as for his comedy. Now, Edie Falco weighs in on the appeal of Pete Davidson, after playing his mother in new comedy series, Bupkis.

Whether she’s portraying a loyal mafia wife in The Sopranos or a morally dubious healthcare worker in Nurse Jackie, Edie Falco is a formidable (and award-winning) chameleon. But to play a heightened version of actor Pete Davidson’s mother in his semi-autobiographical comedy Bupkis, Falco drew on her own, very real single-mum experiences. In a lively chat in which she also offers a possible fate of her beloved character Carmela Soprano, she tells Stellar about her latest parenting parallels: “There’s obviously a lot of crossover”

When The Sopranos premiered in 1999, Edie Falco didn’t expect that it would become universally heralded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. “It’s the luck of the draw,” she tells Stellar with a shrug. “And it was the luck of my draw that I got to work with such talented writers and actors.”

As Carmela, the steadfast wife of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Falco went on to win three Emmys, two Golden Globes and five Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Even so, the 59-year-old confesses, “When I did Sopranos, I was not a mother and I was very much concerned that it would read that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

Edie Falco thought she couldn’t pull off the role of Carmela Soprano. Picture: John Lamparski/Getty Images

Pete Davidson stars in Bupkis, a new comedy series based on his life. Picture: Getty Images

Recalling that actors Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler, who played her children Meadow and AJ, were 14 and 11 when the show started, she adds, “I thought, nobody’s going to buy this. It was a big private fear of mine that nobody was going to find me believable as a mother.”

These days, Falco is a single mother off-screen to teens Anderson and Macy, a son and a daughter she adopted in the 2000s, and her parenting experiences have informed her role as the onscreen version of comedian Pete Davidson’s mother Amy in Bupkis, a semi-autobiographical comedy that depicts an exaggerated take of Davidson’s life.

But unlike the real Amy Davidson – who became a solo parent after her New York City firefighter husband Scott died in 2001, while responding to the September 11 attacks on

the World Trade Center – Falco is a single parent by choice.

“It was something I wanted to do on my own, which was not the case with Amy Davidson,” Falco explains.

“So [our experiences are] very different. But the challenges of raising kids on your own, there’s obviously a lot of crossover.”

Prior to Bupkis, Falco didn’t know much about Saturday Night Live alum Davidson. “I mean, I knew who he was, but more from a gossip standpoint,” she continues, laughing about his romantic past with Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale and Kim Kardashian.

“I knew he had been on SNL, but I can’t stay up that late anymore, so I hadn’t seen him on the show. So I didn’t really know much about his persona or what he does until I met him.”

Now that she has, Falco gets Davidson’s appeal. “He’s adorable,” she gushes, joking that he’s “about nine-feet [2.74 metres] tall, which I didn’t expect. He giggles and is self-deprecating. He’s humble, he’s bright, and he just seems very much alive. He’s sort of soaking it all in and has this contagious energy. He’s just nice to be around.”

Although Falco has portrayed real people before, most recently former US senator Hillary Clinton in the 2021 series Impeachment: American Crime Story, she offers a distinction.

“Playing someone who is real and alive and well known is one thing,” she says. “[But] playing someone who is real and alive and not famous was fine because I don’t think Pete’s mum is going to be worried that I was going to portray her accurately in terms of how I looked or dressed or talked, or whatever.”

While Falco hasn’t received feedback on her performances from either woman, fans still theorise on what ultimately became of the Sopranos.

Asked about the series’ much hyped final episode – with the family gathered around a dinner table before the screen fades to black – Falco says it’s still open to interpretation, even though series creator David Chase recently confirmed speculation that Tony was killed.

“We shot a scene where nothing happens and that’s where we ended it,” she recalls, adding that it was never made clear to the actors they were filming Tony’s death scene.

“It’s not like something happened and we didn’t tell you. It’s kind of up to you guys, I guess, to decide what you think happened.”

And what might have happened to Carmela? “She probably took the reins and is carrying on to this day in some dimension.”

The rich onscreen world Carmela inhabited provided stability and privacy for Falco when, during filming in 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I don’t do well when people are like, ‘How are you doing? Do you need to sit down? Do you need a break?’ I have the opposite reaction to that. It makes me self-conscious and uncomfortable,” she tells Stellar.

“So nobody asked me a word. That made it much easier for me to get up each day and do my job.”

What wasn’t work was getting to know James Gandolfini, who died in June 2013 at the age of 51, after suffering a heart attack while on holiday in Italy.

“It’s hard to imagine that it has been 10 years,” Falco says quietly of the actor who played her husband for eight years.

“I think he’d be pretty shocked about the fact that people still talk about this show. He was so humble. He never really relaxed into the role of celebrity or sex symbol … He pooh-poohed all that because it wasn’t a place he was comfortable. He really was just a journeyman actor,” she adds.

“So he would have laughed his head off if he saw that we were chatting about the show now. And in Australia, too!”

Bupkis premieres this Thursday on Binge. For more from Stellar, listen to its podcast, Something To Talk About, below.

Originally published as Edie Falco on The Sopranos, motherhood – and the secret appeal of Pete Davidson