The Sopranos’ Livia Has a Heartbreaking Real-Life Inspiration
Livia's real-life roots make her a much more important character than fans may have realized.
In the mid-1990s, David Chase, The Sopranos writer and producer, came up with a plot about a mobster undergoing psychotherapy. During these sessions, the character realizes that his own mother planned to kill him in revenge for sending her to a nursing home.
Chase pitched the story to studios and networks as a series, hoping they would give him money for at least an hour-long pilot. Chase did not believe that all of this could end in a full season.
The plan was to use the TV money after the pilot was finished to raise money to shoot another half-hour and make a full-fledged low-budget movie.
There were a lot of autobiographical details in the script. The story is set in Chase's hometown in New Jersey, a state notorious for organized crime.
Most of the characters had real-life counterparts in Chase's inner circle. Tony, the protagonist, a poorly educated and short-tempered Italian-American going through a midlife crisis and suffering from panic attacks, was part self-portrait and part based on the screenwriter's father.
His last name – Soprano – Chase borrowed from a classmate who was apparently associated with the mafia.
And the protagonist's mother – a mischievous, narcissistic, passive-aggressive old woman – Chase based on his own mother.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Chase revealed Livia's real-life prototype.
According to the show's creator, he had been looking for a way to write about difficult relationship with his mother for a long time, and that's how he came up with the idea for the show that eventually became The Sopranos.
So while Livia's role in the show doesn't take up a lot of screen time, she's actually one of the main characters that made Tony Soprano who he is.
It should be noted, though, that Livia is an exaggerated image of Chase's mother. Unlike Livia, she never tried to kill her son, although David did tell a story about how his mother once threatened to gouge his eye out with a fork.
Tony and Livia's relationship on the show was extremely toxic and unhealthy, and the fact that there's a real mother-son relationship behind it makes it all the more heartbreaking.
Source: 60 Minutes