The
Sopranos will forever be instilled in the fabric of
culture. Its success and game-changing format was intrinsic to the success of
HBO and revitalised televisual drama forever. Without The Sopranos HBO would not have experienced the success it enjoys
today and we would not have shows like Game
of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and True Blood. This successful model was
adopted by other networks like AMC, FX and Showtime who have given us Dexter, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.
The Sopranos was the game
changer and revolutionalised television forever. Televisual drama is now
considered a valued art form akin to film thanks to the success of The Sopranos.
The series’ rich and compelling storylines
captivated audiences for 8 years and won a host of Emmys over its six seasons.
Tony Soprano is still one of the most fascinating characters in television
history but he was helped by a phenomenal supporting cast and smorgasbord of
scintillating guest stars. David Chase, the show’s creator and executive
producer recruited a multitude of familiar gangster actors over the series,
including David Proval (from Mean Streets),
Robert Loggia (from Scarface), Burt
Young (from Rocky and Once Upon a Time in America), Frank
Vincent (Goodfellas, Casino) and Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs), to name but a few.
In this article we’ll look at host of
character actors and famous faces who guest starred on the show – some of which
before they became household names.
- Will Arnett
Episodes: ‘For All Debts Public and
Private’ & ‘No Show’, Season 4
That’s right – G.O.B. Bluth guest-starred
on The Sopranos. During Season 4,
Arnett appeared in two episodes as FBI agent Mike Waldrup. He was the husband
of Deborah – the FBI agent who befriends Adrianna as an undercover informant.
This of course is the beginning of an arc that has devastating consequences for
several characters. Arnett’s character has very little screen time and would be
completely forgettable was it not for his future success. Arnett was in the
early phase of his career where he had one off appearances on many television
dramas including Law & Order: Special
Victims Unit and Sex & the City
- despite being celebrated as a comedic actor. However, he would become a
household name the next year with the arrival of Arrested Development in 2003.
The cult classic gave us one of television’s most enduring doofuses – aspiring
magician George Oscar ‘G.O.B.’ Bluth. Imagine the comedic possibilities of a
G.O.B. interaction with Christopher or Paulie Walnuts. Something tells me the
Mafiosi wouldn’t have much time for one of the world’s worst magicians.
Arrested Development was cancelled in 2006 by FOX in a hail of controversy as
the show was a cult classic and one of the most critically acclaimed sitcoms of
all time. FOX was not enamoured with this cult following and cancelled the show
due to poor ratings. Arrested Development will miraculously and rapturously
return on May 26 on Netflix.
- Michael K. Williams
Season Three, ‘Army of One’
One of the stars of the other HBO masterpiece The Wire briefly appears in an episode
towards the end of Season Three. When Jackie Aprile, Jr. foolishly attempts to
rob one of the executive card games, things go horribly wrong and Jackie Jr.
must take shelter with Williams’s character and his young daughter. The
appearance was hardly a career breakthrough mainly due to Williams’s miniscule
screen time but Wire fans could not
mistake the actor’s formidable presence mainly due to the actor’s real facial
scars. Like Arnett, Williams also appeared in a number of US television dramas
in the early stage of his career such as Law
& Order and Alias. Similar
again to Arnett, he would not have to wait long for a recurring starring role.
The following year Williams was cast as Omar Little in The Wire. Omar is one of the most iconic characters in the series
and was a series regular throughout the show’s five season run. The character who
is a daring thief and who is also gay was even the personal favourite of US
President Barack Obama despite his violent criminal behaviour. Williams now
stars on Boardwalk Empire as Albert
‘Chalky’ White which is developed by former Sopranos
writer/producer Terrence Winter.- Tobin Bell
Season Three: ‘Army of One’
‘Hello Mr. Soprano, I’d like to play a
game’. The infamous ‘Jigsaw Killer’ featured in the same episode as Williams
during season three. Tobin Bell, the man behind cinema’s most successful serial
killers of recent years shared a scene with Tony and Carmella Soprano. He plays
Major Zwingli, the dean of a military school that the Sopranos are
contemplating sending the troubled AJ to when he gets expelled from high
school. In fact the incident in question that spells this trouble for AJ
features another famous face (seen at the end of this list). Bell had
previously featured in small television roles in the likes of 24, Stargate
SG-1 and The West Wing. Bell
found his career defining role when James Wan cast him as the deviously
demented Jigsaw Killer in Saw and its
six sequels. To date, the Saw franchise
has grossed over $800 million at box offices worldwide and Bell has been the
franchise’s star. The genre revitalised by Saw
in the earlier 00’s was lampooned in The
Sopranos when Christopher decides to cash in on the torture porn craze with
his violent fantasy Cleaver. Although he doesn’t snare Tony and
Carmella in a vicious death trap – Bell retains his intimidating presence and
his raspy husky voice that made the Jigsaw Killer so endearing to horror fans.
- Nancy Sinatra & Frank Sinatra, Jr.
Final Season: ‘Chasing It’, Season Two:
‘The Happy Wanderer’
Among the principal cast of The Sopranos is Steven Van Zandt the
guitarist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Van Zandt was cast on David
Chase’s love of music despite a limited acting background. Keeping with the
tradition of musicians on the show – these appearances are much more
interesting. The children of Ol’ Blue Eyes himself – Frank Sinatra appeared at
separate times as themselves over the series. Frank, Jr. features in Season Two
as a card player of the Soprano-run ‘Executive Game’. This is also the game
where Robert Patrick (the T-1000 of Terminator 2) bets his entire fortune and
loses it all. Nancy Sinatra, the singer of such hits as ‘Bang, Bang’ and ‘These
Boots Are Made for Walking’ appears in the final season at a party for the
newly crowned boss of New York Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent). She even
interrupts a heated discussion between Tony and Phil brazenly asking: ‘you two
going home with each other?’ What is confounding is that the children of
Sinatra would continue to perpetuate their family’s connection to the Mafia.
Sinatra’s Mob connections allegedly coerced a Hollywood producer to cast the
singer in an Oscar winning role in From
Here to Eternity. This would serve as inspiration in The Godfather.
- Frankie Valli
Seasons Five & Six
Another musician on the list, Frankie Valli
is one of the biggest music stars of all time. With hits like ‘Big GirlsDon’t
Cry’, ‘Sherry’ and ‘I Can’t Tale My Eyes Off of You’, Valli and his band the
Four Seasons had a career to rival The Beatles. So this is all the more amusing
that a pop singer like Valli should be playing a feared New York gangster.
Frankie Valli’s music appeared (the song ‘Dawn (Go Away)’ features in season
four) in the show long before the Four Seasons leader himself was cast. He is
even referred to by Tony and Silvio in an earlier episode where Silvio must use
his connections to get Valli booked in a Native American casino as a favour.
Valli as Rusty Millio appeared many times over series five and six as an ally
of Carmine Lupertazzi, Jr. during the war with Johnny Sack’s outfit. Rusty met
an unfortunate demise in a hit ordered by Johnny Sack. Valli a proud
Italian-American and New Jersey native seemed like an odd choice to appear on a
show that has a somewhat stereotypical view of Italians. Still, Valli could’ve
done worse and appeared on Jersey Shore.- Hal Holbrook
Season Six: ‘The Fleshy Part of the Thigh’
The Academy Award nominated actor features
in one episode of the sixth season. When Tony suffers a near-fatal gunshot from
Junior, he spends several weeks in hospital. When Tony comes out of his
existentialist coma he meets the Lincoln
star. Holbrook plays a physicist who clues Tony into the interconnectivity of
all life, telling him how no event or entity can be understood independent from
the rest of the world – how ‘everything is connected’. Holbrook’s musings on
quantum physics are lost on Paulie Walnuts who during a bad signalled boxing
match on satellite TV abruptly challenges: ‘you’re so f***in’ smart, fix the
TV!’ This is all taken in by Tony who is going through an existential and
spiritual awakening which is welcomed after hearing a pastor’s creationist
ideas. Holbrook went on to star in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild the following year as Ron, the lonely leather worker
who passes his trade onto Alexander Supertramp (Emile Hirsch) and offers to
adopt him as his grandchild. Holbrook’s touching performance earned an Academy
Award nomination the in 2007 but lost out to Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men.- Sydney Pollack
Final Season: ‘Stage Five’
The Academy Award winning director of Out of Africa made a cameo appearance in
the final season. He plays Dr. Warren Feldman, a formerly reputed surgeon who
is serving time for the murder of his wife. He later befriends Johnny Sack
while advising him on his cancer treatment in prison hospital. Another prolific
director Peter Bogdanovich also had a recurring role as psychiatrist to
Lorraine Bracco’s Dr Melfi, who is titillated by the gossip of Mafia life. Dr
Feldman, despite his own transgressions, is another character who is fascinated
by Mafia figures. He is seen gushing over Johnny Sack’s Mafia stories and
descriptions of New York boss Carmine Lupertazzi. As well as directing such
films as Three Days in the Condor and
Tootsie, Pollack is also known from
starring roles in Michael Clayton and
in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
Pollack always had a welcome naturalistic presence onscreen and this appearance
was his third last ever screen performance. This episode is also the last
appearance of Johnny Sack who dies of cancer. This unfortunately is mirrored by
the actor’s fate as Pollack died in 2008 after his own long battle with cancer.
- Annette Bening
Season Five: ‘The Test Dream’
Keeping with the Oscar nominees, this
four-time Academy Award nominee is the sole entry on this list that is playing
herself - albeit in a dream. Bening appears in ‘The Test Dream’ in Season 5.
This episode is where Tony spends a night in the Plaza in New York and sleeps
uneasy worrying about his livewire cousin Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi).
Bening plays the (imagined) mother of Tony’s future son in law, Finn who is
recently engaged to Tony’s daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler). Tony’s
imagination is always fervid and creative and even calls her out on her fame
asking: ‘You’re Annette Bening, ain’t you?’ Bening is no stranger to the
gangster genre as she starred in Warren Beatty’s Bugsy (to whom she later married). The episode is one of the most
notoriously trippy as it is almost entirely set in Tony’s subconscious. Bening
is not the only Hollywood actor to play themselves on the show. Ben Kingsley
and Lauren Bacall also appeared as snooty versions of themselves in the final
season. Kingsley was courted for the antagonist role in ‘Cleaver’ by
Christopher and Little Carmine while Bacall was violently mugged by
Christopher. Cleaver’s lead role eventually went to Daniel Baldwin who
channelled his inner Tony Soprano for the part.- Paul Dano
Season Four: ‘Everybody Hurts’ & Season
Five: ‘All Due Respect’
The Ruby
Sparks star featured in two episodes during the fourth season as a friend
to AJ Soprano (Robert Iler). Dano didn’t display any of his intensity that
would later become evident in There Will
be Blood and Looper – but was a
geeky and spoiled rich pal of AJ’s whose friendship is based on Dano’s
obsession with The Godfather. He is
fascinated by the Sopranos’ various legitimate businesses which he assumes are
a front to the shady Mafia dealings. He even likens Tony’s base of operations,
the Satriale’s Pork Store, to Genco’s Olive Oil (where Vito Corleone operated
from in The Godfather). Dano had
already made a memorable debut performance alongside Brain Cox at aged 15 in
Michael Cuesta’s superb 2001 film L.I.E.
Here, Dano is barely recognisable from his powerful turn in L.I.E. and instead uses a geeky persona
that would become a staple of his career (see The Girl Next Door, Gigantic).
Three years later, Dano would break through to the mainstream with his role in Little Miss Sunshine as troubled
Nietzsche loving mute Dwayne. The film was a commercial and critical smash and
went on to win two Oscars in 2006.
- Lady Gaga
Season Three: ‘The Telltale Moozadell’
This one is a tricky find. But it is true.
Lady Gaga – the ‘Born this Way’ singer was in The Sopranos. The then 15 year old - billed by her real name
Stefani Germanotta - plays a friend of AJ’s. In this episode the gang of
friends vandalise the school swimming pool and trophy cabinet which leads to
AJ’s expulsion from school. AJ is ultimately found out by his pizza being left
at the scene of the crime and giving the episode it’s title: ‘The Telltale
Moozadell’. Interestingly, Michael Imperioli who plays Christopher Moltissanti
on the show wrote the now infamous episode. Germanotta would break through with
the smash hit ‘Just Dance’ 7 years later, followed by the behemoth album The Fame. She is today, of course, one
of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Germanotta is barely recognisable here
as a 15 year old high school student. One of Gaga’s most famous fashion
statements - a dress made up of slabs of meat worn at the 2010 MTV Video Music
Awards would not look out of place at Satriale’s.
