It was heralded as the best TV series of all time, but The Sopranos almost never got made.
The creator of the cult Mafia show has revealed how the original script didn’t include a single murder.
David Chase confesses to blundering as nobody got whacked in his first draft.
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After the script was rubbished by TV channel Fox, Chase decided to add a few grizzly deaths and completely rewrote it before trying again with HBO.
And the rest is history.
The body count of the series – which ran on HBO for 86 episodes from 1999 to 2007 – came to a whopping 88. At the centre was the late, great James Gandolfini as mob king Tony Soprano.
The Sopranos saw a resurgence during lockdown, with many fans rewatching it, while others discovered it for the first time.
Chase says: “The first draft was for Fox (but) they turned it down.
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“I realised it was because I hadn’t put any murders in.
“People watch mob shows because they like to see murders and betrayals.
“So when I went to HBO, I completely rewrote it. Had Fox said yes, it would have been a calamity of competing agendas – a total piece of crap.”
He adds: “I’ve heard of people who have watched all 86 episodes seven, eight times. People relate to Tony’s problems with his work and home life.
“It gives an accurate picture of life, suburbia and US commercialism in the early 2000s.
“Even though there are clunky old cellphones and old-fashioned TVs, it’s stood the test of time.
“It was the high point of my career. It’s not going to get better than that.”
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In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named The Sopranos as the best-written TV series of all time.
There’s a Sopranos’ spin-off coming out soon. A film, The Many Saints of Newark, is written by Chase, and will star Michael Gandolfini, 21, son of Tony Soprano actor James, as a young Tony.
