After Tony
New York magazine|September 27 - October 10, 2021
David Chase returns to The Sopranos, the masterpiece he’s been unable to escape since it went off the air 14 years ago
By Matt Zoller Seitz
After Tony

DAVID CHASE IS TELLING STORIES AGAIN.

The 76-year-old creator of The Sopranos is seated at the kitchen table of a production office in Santa Monica, eating takeout Mexican food and telling me about the time his paternal grandfather, Joseph Fusco, confessed to killing a man. Fusco told the story to a then-12-year-old Chase, who had been sent to Fusco’s apple farm in Hudson, New York, for a week during summer vacation. They were sitting in the kitchen one night after dinner, green apples piled in a bowl between them. “He was telling me he murdered a guy in Buffalo,” Chase recalls. “They got in an argument in a bar. They went outside.” Things escalated—Fusco hit him in the head with a brick. The other guy was a romano— Roman—though not from his grandfather’s area. “Fusco was bad news. Bad guy.” Chase pauses a moment, staring at his rice and beans in a Styrofoam box. “Who knows if it’s true?” he says finally. “But why would you tell that to a 12-year-old kid who’s staying with you? Who the fuck does that?”

This story is from the September 27 - October 10, 2021 edition of New York magazine.

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This story is from the September 27 - October 10, 2021 edition of New York magazine.

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