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Louise Thomas
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Edie Falco has opened up about her monologue that was cut from the 2021 Sopranos spin-off film The Many Saints of Newark.
The actor, 61, played the role of Carmela Soprano, the wife of mafia don Tony (James Gandolfini) on the hit HBO crime drama.
It had previously been revealed that Falco filmed a scene for the film, that was ultimately not featured in the final cut. Now, the Nurse Jackie star disclosed further details about the cut scene, and her reaction to it.
“I came in, and I did a monologue,” Falco told IndieWire. “I’m embarrassed that I don’t know what [exactly] it was about. It was Carmela as if she was musing on the old days, and then the movie began. Then I found out that [Many Saints director Alan Taylor] didn’t end up using it. What a flippy day that was.
“All these years later they’re doing my hair, putting on jewelry, putting the nails back on, it was like a serious trip. There were so many Sopranos people there. It was so lovely. I’m so deeply fond of those people, Alan Taylor, of course, amongst them.”
The Many Saints of Newark was set decades before the events of The Sopranos, and focuses on a teenaged Tony (played by Michael Gandolfini, the son of the late series lead) and his mobster uncle Dickie Moltesanti (Alessandro Nivola).
The film cast a number of actors as younger versions of Sopranos characters: Corey Stoll as Junior Soprano, Billy Magnussen as Paulie Walnuts, John Magaro as Silvio Dante and Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano.
Speaking about reprising the role of Carmela, Falco mused: “It was crazy, but so normal, because I spent 10 years of my life doing that daily. You don’t get to do that a lot.”
In a four-star review of the film for The Independent, critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “It’s not all that necessary to be acquainted with The Sopranos to enjoy its feature-length prequel, The Many Saints of Newark. What it demands from its audience is only this: an understanding that there is no innocence among the powerful, and that men too often carry on the burdens of their forefathers.
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“Such fatalistic ideas were already the lifeblood of David Chase’s celebrated mob drama, which aired on HBO from 1999 to 2007 and is still widely regarded to be a peerless work of television. But here they’re delivered with that quiet ache that can only come with the passing of time. The Many Saints of Newark is both instantly recognisable and somehow unplaceable. It’s fierce and brilliant, too – a work that both expands on and complicates the cultural legacy of The Sopranos.”
