More familiar as a young mafioso in The Sopranos, on closer inspection Michael Imperioli proves to be the world’s politest wiseguy
Danny Leigh
Here, let me take your coat. An ashtray? Sure, sure. Use mine …” For a man who has, over the past three years, shot a hapless patisserie assistant in the foot, jammed a paintbrush up the nose of a coke-addled pimp and cold-bloodedly executed various members of the New Jersey underworld, the sheer, ceaseless good manners of Michael Imperioli are something to behold.
Of course, in reality, Michael Imperioli husband, father, respected presence on stage and screen did none of these things. It was Christopher Moltisanti, ascendant Young Turk of mob family The Sopranos. Still, such is the uncanny nature of Imperioli’s performance in the show, so familiar the thick East Coast cadence that, if you narrow your gaze, you could easily be sitting at the Bada-Bing listening to Moltisanti detail his latest atrocity.
Instead, Imperioli is softly explaining how he can’t stand screen violence. He thought Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was a masterpiece, he says, a work of genius. “And I never wanted to see it again. It made me squeamish. Having said that, if our show didn’t have the violence, that’s when it’d be dangerous. People get seduced by these funny, charming gangsters, so it’s good for them to be reminded that no, it’s not all pasta and wisecracks.”
Pasta and wisecracks, and crime and parenting, and to borrow the immortal phrasing of troubled patriarch Tony Soprano “cunnilingus and psychiatry”. Such is the make-up of what Imperioli proudly calls “our show”, a golden chapter in TV history, responsible for the mainstream recognition of any number of fine actors previously known only to the sadly obsessive.
Yet, back when series creator David Chase was first piecing the project together, Imperioli admits to hesitation. “You only see the one script, ’cause it’s only for the pilot. And obviously I thought it was good, but at the same time you know if it gets picked up you’re committing for a long time. So you really have to trust that you’re going to want to do the next 35 scripts as well …”
Naturally, with hindsight, the decision looks a no-brainer. And, amid the plaudits heaped on the cast’s shoulders, it’s Imperioli’s performances that have provided many of the show’s greatest moments. Sure, James Gandolfini’s Tony may be The Sopranos’s (a)moral centre: but it’s Moltisanti with his neuroses and screenwriting aspirations who’s walked the most dizzying tightropes, his development littered with audacious segues from the hilarious (greeting Martin Scorsese with the words “Kundun I liked it!”) to the just plain brutal.
If you start trading favourite Christopher scenes, you’ll notice the same indulgent warmth in Imperioli’s voice that you might use when discussing an errant little brother.
So, for all his bad behaviour, does the actor actually like his alter-ego? “Yeah. I do. I like him because … I like his loyalty. And I like his impulsiveness. I mean, sometimes the results are pretty stupid but, you know, if something bothers him he’ll speak his mind. And I like the fact that he wrote a script. He’s not one of these guys who says, ‘Oh, I got this idea …’ He actually sat his ass in a chair and did it.”
Maybe Imperioli’s fondness for Christopher comes from professional empathy; the former also being an established writer (having penned two Sopranos episodes and co-written Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam), the latter having spent countless hours on the ill-fated mafia screenplay You Bark, I Bite.
Or perhaps it’s an acknowledgement that while the two men’s demeanours may be worlds apart their backgrounds are not. Imperioli, after all, remains a working-class boy from the Bronx, who credits his bus driver father’s ventures into amateur dramatics as his inspiration to take up acting starting out in off-Broadway theatre productions and movie bit parts until, in 1990, he snagged his big break with a role in Scorsese’s seminal Goodfellas.
Only things didn’t quite pan out as expected. Instead, he found himself back waiting tables before spending a decade developing his reputation with an index of New York’s finest independent directors: among them the mercurial Lee, with whom he later collaborated on Summer of Sam.
The result, released last year, was a dazzling study of the effect serial killer David Berkowitz had on one Bronx neighbourhood in the long, overheated summer of 1977. Tell Imperioli you liked it and he blushes. Ask him about Lee’s reputation for trouble and you get a wry smile.
“The thing about Spike is he’s never sold out. He’s stayed in New York, and in the process I think he’s gone from being a good filmmaker to a great one.” The smile widens. “But he’s a lightning rod for controversy, that’s for sure.”
And so it proved with Sam, disowned by its backers Disney amid (groundless) charges that Lee was sensationalising his subject matter. “I mean, given that no one had actually seen the film at that point, I could understand it. Because if your son or daughter was killed by this guy, then it’s a tough call … but that story has become part of New York history. It’s got a right to be told.”
Before the next question, he runs across the room to empty the ashtray. It’s one of the ironies about Imperioli that someone so pathologically courteous keeps finding himself beset by controversy. Because, much as Summer of Sam was mired in protest, so The Sopranos’s success has been punctuated with outraged howls over the moral ambivalence that frequently finds you repulsed and tickled at exactly the same time .
“And I think,” he says, “that’s why the TV establishment has never accepted us. I mean, in Britain [they’re] more used to challenging drama. In America, TV is just boring, and numbing, and” he breaks, inexplicably, into cockney “bloody terrible.”
An opinion, you suspect, only confirmed by The Sopranos being snubbed two years running by the Emmys, the Oscars of US television. “Yeah, that’s been frustrating. Especially the first year, it was kind of ridiculous because the show that won [legal drama The Practice] is just … awful. Mediocre. It’s a show about lawyers! I mean, already it’s like how interesting can it be?”
Then, of course, there’s been the Italian-American pressure groups, touting allegations of racism that helped see the show’s cast banned from New York’s annual Columbus Day Parade (“which is pretty funny considering the guy they’re celebrating was like the original gangster”).
So how does the offspring of Sicilian immigrants feel about that? “Well, it’s interesting. There’s this one group called the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League and they were writing furious letters to editors and what have you. And David Chase, who is of course also an Italian-American, agreed to meet them.”
A beat. “None of them had ever seen the show! And anyway, should the purpose of a TV show be to show flattering images of good people? Because that’s not drama. That’s propaganda.”
Still, for all the grief, you sense there’s a side to Imperioli that discreetly relishes the attention The Sopranos has brought him in New York; even if the fans who accost him in the street “always seem a bit disappointed I’m not more like Christopher”. Only there’s one thing he won’t do for anyone and that’s break bread with Hollywood. Mention Los Angeles and the prospect of relocation when The Sopranos finally ends, and his expression freezes in horror.
“Oh no. No way. There’s too many actors in LA. I mean, I’ll go out there from time to time, but I always find it pretty soul-destroying. I don’t drive, and the people kind of rub me the wrong way …”
And, just for a second, Michael Imperioli comes over all Christopher Moltisanti. “It’s just not home. You know? It’s not New York. It’s not … my town.”
The details
Watch Michael Imperioli in the new series of The Sopranos on e.tv from July 27 at 9pm