The Sopranos creator David Chase is famously tight-lipped about upcoming plotlines. He's even got his badass cast whipped like kittens when it comes to secrecy. Perhaps they fear sleeping with da fishes — á la Big Pussy Bonpensiero — if they spill a spoiler? Fortunately, Chase recently spared a few hints about Season 5 (starting March 7 on HBO) at the Television Critics Association press tour in Hollywood. Here's what we learned...
"The ticking off point of the fifth season is based on an article that I read in the Newark Star Ledger, about the highly publicized RICO cases of the '80s," Chase said. "They put a lot of guys away back then — it was when they really 'broke the back of the Mafia' is what they said. I read that a lot of those guys are now getting out of jail. They've served their time and they are hitting the streets again. So the show begins with what we call the Mafia
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Last year on HBO's The Sopranos, Tony and Carmela's marriage went down la toletta. In Season 5, which kicks off March 7, the Italian-American marital feud only gets worse. For the recently divorced James Gandolfini, playing those gut-wrenching scenes can take a toll.
"Having gone through something similar personally, [it] was a little difficult to have to dredge those things up sometimes," he told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour in Hollywood. "Especially if you're acting with someone like Edie Falco, it's just going to take you to places that you haven't been before. Sometimes, it was hard. It was very difficult on some of those days to do some of those things, and to continue on into it."
Since the Sopranos cast has alr
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Sopranos fans who sample the premiere of NBC's Kingpin (Sunday at 10 pm/ET) expecting the crime-family serial to be a Latin-flavored rehash of HBO's Mob hit can just fughedaboudit. Although the new drama features onetime Sopranos guest star Yancey Arias in the lead role of ambivalent drug czar Miguel Cadena, and is directed by frequent Sopranos helmer Allen Coulter, its twice-told tale owes no greater debt to Big Pussy than it does to the Bard.
"We all love The Sopranos, but Kingpin is more like The Godfather meets Traffic with a little bit of Shakespeare added," Arias suggests to TV Guide Online. "It's a different show altogether.
"When you first met Tony Soprano
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Last season, fans of The Sopranos were stunned to learn that Tony's unstable ex-mistress, Gloria the Mercedes dealer, had committed suicide. That it happened offscreen made us suspicious. Why waste an opportunity to bring back Annabella Sciorra by having Tony hear of her demise, instead of playing out the high drama before viewers' eyes? It didn't make sense!
"No, it wouldn't make sense," the 39-year-old Sciorra teases TV Guide Online. "Well, you didn't see her do it, did you? And nobody saw her do it."
So it's possible Gloria might not be dead? "I can't discuss it," she says. "It's a possibility, yeah." Later in our Sopranos tête-à-tête, Sciorra lets it slip that "we're" not starting filming again until February — so Gloria's return sounds like more than j
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