Fame Hurts This Sopranos Star
So what if Edie Falco was robbed at last month's Emmy Awards. The delightful 41-year-old actress still can't wait to return to work on The Sopranos. "At the Emmys, we hadn't seen each other in eight months," Carmela's alter ego tells TV Guide Online. "I am crazy about these people. We just love the time that we spend together."
When will the cast reunite to start filming the much-anticipated final season of HBO's mob hit? "I keep hearing different things, but I think April," she smiles. "I very much look forward to it — and it will be our last season, so it will be filled with lots of sadness and other things."
In the meantime, Falco's moonlighting on Broadway in a revival of 'Night, Mother with Brenda Blethyn. (FYI, the Pulitzer-winning two-woman play starts in previews tomorrow, then officially opens for a 19-week limited run on Nov. 14.) Finding such a juicy part wasn't as easy as Falco had imagined. "My standards are very high now," she insists. "The writers I get to work with on The Sopranos make it hard to just say, 'Sure, I'll do it.' So I was very frightened and disappointed by the [other] stuff I was reading.
"If it is something that moves me, I'll do it," Falco continues. "I'm getting tons of scripts for Italian wives and mothers. They are not interesting to me, and I move on. I have a lot of friends that say, 'I keep getting cast as so-and-so.' I say, 'You keep taking the part! Just say no and let that period of time go on where you don't work. Don't panic. Something will eventually come along.'"
While Falco loves acting on the Broadway stage, there is one teensy problem: her close proximity to rabid Sopranos fans. She was particularly frustrated two years ago when she was starring in the acclaimed Frankie and Johnny at the Claire de Lune. "It was a little upsetting," she sighs, "that I would do two-and-a-half hours on stage, and I'd come out the door and people were yelling, 'Carmela!' I'm like, 'Did you even see the play?'
"It makes me sad," she says. "Sometimes, I would sneak out of the theater and just go home to my dog. Without wanting to complain — so many wonderful things have come to me as a result of that show — but I'm an actress, and hopefully, my career will go on long past Sopranos."
