Sopranos Almost Had a Different Lead: This Actor Almost Snagged Iconic Part
James Gandolfini burst onto our screens as Tony Soprano in 1999 in one of the most iconic and ground-breaking TV shows of all time. Over 6 seasons and 86 episodes, we journeyed with Tony as he struggled to balance family life with being a top New Jersey mob boss.
But if series creator David Chase had had his way, the whole show would have had a very different look.
Chase was pretty confident he was onto something huge. And he sure as hell knew he wanted a show that was different from any gangster show or movie that had come before.
And in his quest for something different, he would have cast Steve van Zandt (who eventually played Silvio Dante) as Tony.
In his 2021 book, Unrequited Infatuations, van Zandt revealed that Chase approached him to play Tony Soprano as the showrunner wanted "unusual new faces". Van Zandt goes on to say that Chase genuinely thought he could play the role and that he naively and ignorantly believed he could do it too.
Why either of them thought he could do it is not really clear. Despite taking on a handful of other roles since appearing in The Sopranos, van Zandt had never acted before. He already had a successful career as a musician – first as part of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and then as a solo performer. But to take on such a huge role in what Chase intended to be a series to shake things up (ok, maybe not to quite the degree it did, but hey) would have been a huge risk.
And HBO knew that. The series had already been turned down by Fox and when Chase pitched it to HBO, they saw promise in the idea of the show but were a little concerned at the creators' bold casting request.
The company put their foot down, Gandolfini was chosen to play the part, and the rest is TV history.
But Chase felt there was still a role for van Zandt and asked him once again to take part in the project. This time, however, the guitarist and singer said he actually felt guilty about taking the part away from a real actor.
Chase replied by saying he'd "write…a part that doesn't exist". And so, Silvio Dante, Tony's consigliere was created so that David Chase could fulfil his wish of including Steve van Zandt in the series.