Introducing Tony Soprano

Michael Gandolfini is the late James’s son. He’s also playing a young Tony in next year’s Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, his film debut. He sits down with MICHAEL HAINEY to discuss his role on HBO’s The Deuce (returning for its third and final season this month) and tackling the character made famous by his father

IT IS, OFCOURSE, his eyes that get you first, his eyes that give him away.

You walk into the restaurant, scan the room, and there he is, hunched over a table tucked close to the wall, catching your eyes with his. Eyes exactly like his father’s.

He pops up from his seat, extends his hand, and gives a big smile—the same smile his father had but rarely flashed. “Hi, I’m Michael Gandolfini,” he says. He’s thinner than his father was, and full of boyish energy. But you notice other mannerisms—the way he runs his fingers through his hair, how he rubs his nose with the back of his hand. And all at once you realize why it was inevitable that David Chase would cast him, the twenty-year-old son of the man who played the adult Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini, as the teenage Tony in the feature-length Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark (2020).

Stepping into your father’s shoes would be fraught for any of us. Your identity becomes forever entwined with his. Now imagine you are not just pursuing your father’s profession, seeking your own path, but you are also taking on the role he made iconic. So here you are, playing the younger version of a man your father brought to life, and yet your father, the man who created this role—as well as you, his son—is gone. Has been since you were fourteen years old. You were there when he died of a heart attack, in June 2013, while on a family vacation in Rome. He was just fifty-one.