STACK #208 Feb 2022

MOVIE FEATURE

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spoken by Giuseppina, explaining, “Luckily, I came across a friend whose parents were from Naples, and he was taught as a little kid how to speak it. It’s just totally different. The things we maybe take a minute to say in sort of the standard Italian, they can get out in ten seconds. It was an interesting thing to do and a nice challenge.” With a stellar ensemble cast including Leslie Odom Jr, Corey Stoll and Billy Magnussen, several names in this prequel will be familiar to series’ fans: Tony’s mother, Livia, his uncle “Junior,” and even youthful gangsters Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri, Silvio Dante and Salvatore Bonpensiero, later to become seminal members of Tony’s crew. But all eyes, inevitably, are on Michael Gandolfini, even though

• The Many Saints of Newark is out on Feb 2

Serving as an origin story to the hit TV series The Sopranos , The Many Saints of Newark introduces us to an earlier generation of the criminal clan. Words Gill Pringle R ay Liotta is probably more synonymous with playing a mobster than any of the original TV cast SAINTS & SOPRANOS

he doesn’t feature as much as audiences might have hoped. Cast as the younger version of his father brought back many memories. “I remember running around the Sopranos set and the cast and the crew and everybody being so nice to me,” recalls the young actor who was actually at his father’s side when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, aged 51, in Rome in 2013. “But I was sheltered from many of the scenes, so I didn’t really know what was going on. I just grew up with it, so I didn’t really know it was unusual,” says Gandolfini, who made his screen debut in Ocean’s 8 (2018). “I’m roughly the age of the show. I was born while they were filming the first season. I’d

DID YOU KNOW? • The film’s title comes from Dickie Moltisanti’s

family’s name, which means ‘many saints’ in English. • Ray Liotta turned down the role of Tony Soprano in The Sopranos , because he didn’t want to commit to a TV series. • Many Saints’ director Alan Taylor also helmed nine episodes of The Sopranos .

of The Sopranos – many of whom were relative unknowns when first cast in the award-winning series. And the veteran actor gets to do it again in the big screen prequel about the beloved mob family. Starring in the Sopranos’ origin story, The Many Saints of Newark , Liotta brings his mobster pedigree to Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti in this throwback film featuring an earlier generation of the Sopranos and fellow mob, the Moltisantis. If the late, great James Gandolfini truly inhabited the role of Tony Soprano, it’s bittersweet to see his son Michael Gandolfini, 23, step into his father’s shoes to play a teenaged Tony during the ‘60s and ‘70s. He’s a sweet kid who attempts to bond with his uncle and mentor Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola). With “Uncle Dickie” as a twisted role model, what’s a boy to do when his dad, Johnny Soprano (Jon Bernthal), is banged up in prison and his mum, Livia Soprano (Vera Farmiga), too distracted? The filmmakers were all huge fans of Liotta’s performance in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas , so he was always the first choice to play Dickie’s father, Aldo. The actor describes his character as a

Michael Gandolfini and Alessandro Nivola

mobster who once hobnobbed with celebrities, now taking a less active role in the family business. “I like to keep my fingers in it, but I’m not as involved as I used to be. I went over to Italy

come to the set and see my dad film funny, goofy scenes. He’d never let me see scenes that were really violent. Tony Soprano, to me, was some chubby guy walking down a street, getting the paper.”

and found myself a young, beautiful wife Giuseppina, and I want to show her off to my son. I’m feeling really proud and happy,” he says. However, when Aldo and his Neapolitan wife move into Dickie’s Newark duplex, long-simmering family tensions escalate, as Nivola’s Dickie also falls in love with his dad’s bride. Prior to filming, Liotta learned to speak some of the Neapolitan dialect

But he doesn’t want fans to think he’s emulating his father. “I was playing Tony, but I didn’t feel the pressure of having to recreate my dad; it was really about doing my job the best I could. I’m just excited for everyone to see it. It’s been a long time coming, but you just hope that you can do justice to the fans and to everyone who loved the series.”

FURTHER VIEWING

16 FEBRUARY 2022

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