{"id":2290745,"date":"2026-02-20T09:41:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2290745"},"modified":"2026-02-20T09:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:41:06","slug":"it-bothered-james-gandolfini-being-angry-all-the-time-as-tony-soprano-co-star-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/it-bothered-james-gandolfini-being-angry-all-the-time-as-tony-soprano-co-star-says\/","title":{"rendered":"It bothered James Gandolfini being angry all the time as Tony Soprano, co-star says"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Steve Schirripa also said the late actor was \u2018not without his problems\u2019 but was \u2018generous\u2019 and cared about people\n<\/p>\n

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Steve Schirripa, who played mobster Bobby Bacala, said that while millions were gripped by one of TV\u2019s most famous gangster families for nearly a decade, the show began to take its toll on its titular character.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat bothered him, having to be angry all the time, that started getting to him,\u201d the 68-year-old told the Press Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started happening the middle, the end. I mean, don\u2019t forget, he worked 16-hour days, five days a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had to kill people, he had to yell, be angry, every day, every day, every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some people, it\u2019s easy. For some people, it\u2019s not. I think it started bothering him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gandolfini died of a heart attack on holiday in Rome in 2013 aged 51.<\/p>\n

Schirripa, speaking ahead of the Talking Sopranos tour with co-star Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti, said while Gandolfini \u201cwas not without his problems\u201d, he cared about people.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a good guy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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(l to r) James Gandolfini, Steve Schirripa, Aida Turturro and Tony Sirico in Los Angeles in 2005 (Francis Specker\/PA)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201c[He was] a lot of fun. We had a lot of laughs. As a cast, a lot of us hung around together off camera and we had a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe travelled together a lot. We knew each other\u2019s families. You\u2019re together nine or 10 years, people went through marriages, divorces, had babies, so it really did become like a family.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of parties, a lot of cast parties, Christmas parties. Every time somebody got killed off, we took them out to dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim was a good guy, a generous guy, not without problems, which has been said over and over, but a nice guy, and he gave a shit about people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schirripa said the show would go from \u201chysterical\u201d to \u201cextremely violent\u201d with a single episode, or even scene \u2013 but he said that showed the brilliance of the writing.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI think that\u2019s why it\u2019s still endorsed because it was funny, it was sad, it was violent. It was all of these things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t one thing, you know, it wasn\u2019t just a mob show. It went deep. It\u2019s about capitalism. It\u2019s about family. It\u2019s about a lot of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about mob guys hanging out in the strip club, killing people. It\u2019s much deeper and much more complicated. It\u2019s a very smart show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The honesty and realism of the show, Schirripa said, was its strength \u2013 and that included \u201chorrible\u201d scenes where viewers would turn away, including of murder and rape.<\/p>\n

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\"Actor<\/div>\n<\/div>
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Actor James Gandolfini was described as a good guy who cared about people (Francis Specker\/PA)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

But Schirripa does not think any of it was too far, because ultimately it was a show about bad people.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI think the show shows what these guys are all about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the writers, you know, when you\u2019re saying it\u2019s funny, I think the writers knew it was funny, and this is a great show, and then they took you back to reality, that these are bad people.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not bullshit ourselves. These guys are bad guys. They\u2019re not, you know, fun-loving characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take you back to reality to show you these are bad guys, you know, they\u2019re sociopaths, they\u2019re psychopaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kill in a drop of a dime and then go sit down and eat a steak dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

This type of writing, Schirripa says, is the reason the show \u201cstill holds up very much like it was written today\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think 50 years from now people will still be watching it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Talking Sopranos will be in Edinburgh on Saturday and Glasgow on Sunday before heading to other UK cities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.ie \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Schirripa also said the late actor was \u2018not without his problems\u2019 but was \u2018generous\u2019 and cared about people Steve Schirripa, who played mobster Bobby Bacala, said that while millions were gripped by one of TV\u2019s most famous gangster families for nearly a decade, the show began to take its toll on its titular character. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2290746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/It-bothered-James-Gandolfini-being-angry-all-the-time-as.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2290747,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290745\/revisions\/2290747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2290746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}