 This, this, this is the Michael K Show. You never see a blue comet in that condition. I mean, look at the coaches. Every window still lights up. That train still ran New York to AC. Atlantic City will be a much different place today. Still, it's nice to think that. Imagine riding in that club car, sipping on an agronom. They crammed the whole set, huh? There's other people interested. Who would it go for? Your son will like this, too. Looks fast. You don't care. This is the Michael K Show. We're burning an accident. Old Pumping Station road. On 98.7 ESPN. Ah, welcome back to the Michael K Show, everybody. I hope you're having a good day. We've had a big show so far. Joe Judge, Brian Gumbel, and now we'll be talking Sopranos. And the Sopranos, talking Sopranos now available and currently climbing the charts with a bullet. See what I did? Top 50 list on Apple Podcast. And there are new episodes every single morning. And the stars of Talking Sopranos, two of the stars of the Sopranos, Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Maltesanti and Steve Sharipa, who played Bobby Bacala. And they are nice enough to join us now. Michael and Steve, how you guys doing? Are you staying safe? Yeah, how are you, buddy? How's everything? Yeah, was it okay? You know? I'm Michael. Thanks for having us today. Oh, thanks for coming on, guys. You're both accomplished in what you do, and you've had careers outside the Sopranos. But there are certain actors that get on this dream project, and they know this is as good as it's ever going to get. I'll start with you, Michael. Do you say, no matter what I do in the future, and I could do great things, nothing's going to be better than the Sopranos? Oh, I think it would be hard to do something that's going to be as beloved by people. I mean, I've done stuff that makes me really happy and I enjoy doing, and that I'm very engaged in, and that's challenging, and fun, various movie projects, and independent stuff that I'm involved in, but that are personal that I like. But for the viewers, probably not. What is the biggest type of conversation per day when you're doing the podcast? Well, we do it every Monday. We have it once a week, and we're doing a re-watch. So we have a watch to show in 20 years, and we started going back. We were supposed to do it together in the same room, but then once the virus hit, Michael's in California. I'm here in New York City. So we're doing it remotely. They had announced it. We weren't going to do it because we said, well, what's going on in the world? Is a TV show really that important? And if a lot of the fans on social media were contacting us to do it. So we started. This is our fifth episode. It's out this week. We do a re-watch from episode one, and we're going through the whole 86 episodes. Michael wrote five of them. He was there from day one. I came on the second episode of second season. So you could watch along with us. Michael, what is it? Well, listen, I'm going to have to now do this again. The timing's frustrating because right before the pandemic, I just finished a complete re-watch, which our listeners know because I kept bringing it up like it was new because I'd forgotten some of these moments that were so important. And Christopher's character, Michael, there's a part at the very end of the run for Christopher, which we talk about quite a bit on the show. Do you think that the moment when Christopher Maltesante kills his screenwriting friend? I don't hear that get talked about a lot. But doesn't it feel like if the show were to continue on, him doing that would have eventually had terrible ramifications? Probably. But listen, everything all these guys are doing has terrible ramifications. That life eventually ends up very often two ways, I mean, in jail or dead. So I would say the fact that he lived as long as he did was kind of miracle. The screenwriter or Christopher? Christopher. Maybe both. Now, Steve, I'm wondering how much stress there was every week when David Chase handed you the script, because obviously all of you wanted to be working in this great show, and it was a part of the American Zeitgeist. How much pressure was it to see if somebody got killed off that week? Well, listen, it was absolutely, I mean, I felt it every week. You know, we would get the script at the time we got it FedEx to us. So you would get it, and honestly, you would go to the front, oh, you know, to the front page, you had the whole cast, okay, I'm in this one, and then you would go to the back to see if you got killed off. I mean, you know, it was a real concern. Listen, the Sopranos wasn't like friends. I mean, Joey wasn't getting whacked, you know what I'm saying? I mean, so he probably should have, but you know, this was a concern year after year, season after season. The more your character became popular, the more your character had stuff to do. The, you know, the, you know, it got the stakes got higher and higher, and it was a good shot. You were going to go, you know, and that's what happened. And unfortunately, some of the guys got killed off early season two, season three, season four. I would have been horrible to me, you know, I mean, I made it to the next or last episode, but you know, and not only were you out of work, but you were part of this amazing thing, you know. Now, when you finally did get knocked off in the second to last episode, was it just FedEx or was it a special delivery by David Chase? Yeah, Chase came, David was very nice. He called me. I happened to be home. I was living in Battery Park City at the time. And he said, where are you? I said, I'm in my apartment. He said, well, I'm on my way over. And he came up, the doorman rang him up and I opened the door and he said, I guess you know why I'm here. It was like a real hit. I said, well, I guess so. And we sat down. He was very vague about what was going to happen. And that's how I found that. But you had to be, Steve, I imagine that as time went on, by the time you get really late in the series, the Bobby character evolves so much. Were you pleasantly surprised with how much depth there was to the Bobby character as time went on? Oh, absolutely. Because listen, I came on for one episode. I mean, they hired me for one. There was no guarantee of anything. I mean, I did six in the first season. And then slowly, he did more and more. And then he married the boss' sister. So maybe Bobby wasn't as stupid as everyone thought he was. He's at the right arm of the boss of the family every Sunday. And on and on, oh no, my character had an incredible arc. I mean, I couldn't have asked for anything more than what they gave me. And I was very flattered that David and the writers thought enough of me as an actor that they gave me all that material. I want to direct this one to Michael because we're around the same age. But when you watch an episode from 20 years ago, when you're in your early 30s, do you look back at it and go with all the experience that you've learned and accumulated since then? Do you look back and say, I might have done that differently or I might have done that better because I'm so much better an actor now than I was when I was in this episode? Well, I already did that the other day when I was watching. We watched the Legend of Tennessee Multisonte, which is season one, episode eight or something like that, which I really liked what I did for the most part of that episode. And then I watched The Hit and The Hit, which is either nine or 10. And some of the stuff made me cringe, which I want to bring up, Steve, next time we take the podcast and talk about that because it's interesting. Looking back on stuff, yeah, I would have done it differently. I don't know because I'm a better actor now or just because in hindsight, you know, everything's easier. You know what I mean to look at because you're looking at it rather than experiencing it. But yeah. Now, Michael, I'm wondering, both of you, I mean, a lot of the killings were really stark and it just jolted people that were watching. And the one that always, to me, it still resonates is when Adriana goes down. And I mean, it was brutal. Actors, did you ever watch anything? Oh, wow, that's too much. I mean, did that scene affect you, Michael? I think the most disturbing moment of violence in that scene was when Tony was choking Annabella Shiora's character, Gloria. That, for some reason, was that. And when Ralphie killed, I think her name was Tracy. I forget that. The Ralphie scene outside the club is awful. It's very hard. Those two were the most disturbing for me, I would say. What about when you sat on the dog? That was disturbing. That was disturbing. I'll be honest. I don't know. I mean, I don't equate that with those two. Those two were particularly upsetting because we knew those characters by, you know, well, especially with Gloria's character. We knew her pretty well. I mean, the dog wasn't, there were no animals. I think I'm curious to see what you guys, did Richie show up yet, guys, where you're watching? No, no, we're on episode five right now, which is college, which is an incredible episode and kind of turned the series around. You know, that's if you don't remember, Mike, he took his daughter to visit colleges and then he ran into the snitch and then he brutally chokes him. And as we talked about on the podcast, you know, HBO, you know, didn't want the star of a series. It's the first time probably where a star of a series murdered someone. And they said, we're going to lose the audience into David Chase's credit. He said, no, if he doesn't kill the guy, they're going to lose the audience. Because that's what these guys do, they're brutal mobsters and that's what happens. And that really turned the whole series. That was a big turning point. It's funny, I'm curious to see what you guys feel when the Richie character shows up. Because during my rewatch, when Richie April showed up, the show went from really good and entertaining to having this sort of scary edge to it that it maintained, I thought, for a really long time. And I thought there were some characters like Richie and Ralphie that brought a certain energy. They have a podcast Talking Sopranos, which you could get on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you have your podcast platforms. Now, Steve, I'm going to direct this to you. I mean, we've hung out. You know me. On this show, my show here, our show, they say I'm a bad guy. Because I will occasionally just talk about you getting shot in the train station or train store. And Michael, getting killed by Tony Chokey and Mountain, they say that I'm spoiling things. And I say, the show hasn't been on in 13 years. How am I spoiling things? How much do I have to wait? Am I a bad guy or a good guy? Well, no, I think you're a great guy, Mike. But listen, this is the thing. A whole new generation is watching the show. And, you know, kids that were too young, kids that are now 18 and 19 in their early 20s, that they were too young. I mean, the show's been off the air 13 years. These kids that were 10 and 12 and couldn't watch it then are watching it now. You know, back then HBO had 11 million people. Now, between streaming services, HBO, Amazon, all this stuff, there's probably more people watching it now than, you know, years ago. So you are spoiling, but hey, not everybody has seen it. And that is why the popularity. I mean, we're talking about a show that ended 13 years ago. And not a day, not a week goes by where someone doesn't mention it in some capacity or another. So you would advise me not to give away endings? I think you have a younger audience, sports guys listening, and they probably haven't gone to that yet. Well, you can send out the spoiler, you know, and give them a minute to like, guys, he soft shoot that whole thing. Somebody can call and complain. Michael, stop with the spoilers. And then they'll spit out five spoilers just to irritate the guy. That's bad behavior. That's awful. You know, and you know what we have coming next Monday? David Chase wrote some new dialogue seriously for some of the characters, which we're going to read. David gave it to us, which we're going to read Monday about the coronavirus. Oh, really? He's got some new lines for the first time in 13 years. Christopher lines, Bobby lines, Tony lines, Carmella lines. David Chase sent it to us to read on the podcast. Oh, that's awesome. Which is absolutely amazing. It really is. Michael, in the end, where does the Christopher character land with you? Do you think he's a sympathetic character? At times, I really feel for him. And then in other moments, I think he's as bad a guy as there is on the show. Where does he sit with you? Well, I mean, I look at it as an actor. You know, you try not to judge the character. So I always had a certain amount of affection for him because I liked him. He was a very hard worker. He wasn't just expected everything to come to him. Like he was willing to work for stuff. And yeah, he was kind of a terrible guy at the same time because he was very, you know, he killed people, you know, for his own gain. And he was greedy. And like the rest of those guys, you know, on the show, they all were some extent terrible people at the same time. But there were some admirable qualities and likeable things. I think from the beginning, when we watched this episode, Kenneth E. Moltesante, which is an early midway in the first season, he talks about how the regularness of life not being enough for him. I mean, it's really kind of the key to his character and what would happen to him. And really the beginning, you know, the seeds of drug addiction, you know, I think that's a common thing that a lot of addicts have, you know, that's about escaping from life and wanting something on a little higher frequency and that eventually which is undoing it all. Now, Michael and Steve, I know you guys hang. I've seen you at the garden. Is everybody close from the cast? I mean, are most of you guys really tight? Well, you know, everybody, you know, we don't see them as much as we used to, you know. But yeah, we've all became very good friends. And then, you know, for all those, you know, eight, nine, 10 years, you know, it's like a family. Marriages, divorces, kids being born. We don't see as many people, you know, I don't see as many people as I used to, but listen, we have a lot of guests on the show. I mean, we had Jamie Lynn Sigler and Robert Eiler, the kids, Edie Falco's coming on. We had the casting directors. We had Michael Respoli, who was one of the finalists to be Tony Soprano. And as the 86 go on, you'll see most of the cast, if not all of them, you know, join us. Are you guys looking forward to the movie? Yes, I am very much. I mean, David Chase wrote it. You know, it's going to be good, you know. You're not involved at all, both of you, right? No. Flashbacks and stuff like that? No. Okay. And Michael, I was a fan of yours being a huge fan of the movie Goodfellas. How fondly do you remember the character of Spider? Well, that experience was pretty amazing for me because it was one of the first movies that I worked on. I've done a couple of other movies, really small things. I was still, you know, young and, you know, that was kind of a dream to be with Scorsese and De Niro. I mean, those are two of my, you know, heroes, you know, growing up and when I started pursuing acting. So I always, you know, have a sports analogy to that. That's like being pulled up from the minors and going to play in the World Series in Yankee Stadium, you know? For me, that's what that was like. Well, the show or the podcast called Talking Sopranos, it's one for every single episode during the Sopranos run. It comes out every Monday and you could get it on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, other podcast platforms. It's in the top 50 on Apple Podcast right now, so it's doing very, very well. And I will tell you this, not because they're with us, I've met both of these guys. They are such great, great people and if they're hosting it, I'm going to bet that it's going to be unbelievable and that's been unbelievable so far. Michael and Steve, thank you so much and please both of you stay safe. Hey, thank you guys and be well really. Thanks for having us. Take care. All right, cheers guys. Thank you Michael. You got it. That's Michael Imperiali and Steve Sharip. That's a great idea for a podcast because every single episode has been dissected and thought of over and over and over and discussed and when Peter rewatched the whole series, now the people that were there can tell you what was happening and what was like to do that, that specific episode. It sounds like a great idea. Well, that's what makes it so smart is them caching in because there are so many other podcasts.