Michael Imperioli - Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of the Sopranos

For Jim

To Victoria, Isabella, Vadim and David: Love, forever

Michael

To the loves of my life, Laura, Bria, and Ciara

Steve

THIS ALMOST NEVER HAPPENED.

This book grew out of our podcast, Talking Sopranos, which started airing in April of 2020 and quickly found a great following of wonderful, dedicated fans. Theyve been enormously supportive of us from day oneactually, from before day one.

Because if it werent for them, we wouldnt be here now.

The Sopranos has been off the air for nearly fifteen years now, but the fascination with the show has never ebbed. In fact, there seem to be more people watching it now than when it originally aired. The support of the fans, both those who are watching it again and those who are discovering it for the first time, has been fantastic.

We started noticing it around the time we were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the shows premiere, early in 2019. Michael was working on a pilot in New York that March and shooting a scene in Central Park when a young man, maybe all of twenty years old, walking through the park with his father, politely approached him. He said they were from Scotland, visiting the city for the first time, and were so excited to see a cast member from their favorite show. Suddenly, the young man rolled up his pant legand revealed a tattoo of Michaels face on his calf! He explained that he had discovered the show in the past year and it had quickly become a huge part of his life, to the point where he felt the need to have one of the shows main characters permanently etched into his flesh. It gave us both pause: what the heck was going on out there?

It was about that time we both entered the wide, wild wilderness of social media via Instagram and Facebook. Before long, it became evident to us that The Sopranos had found an entire new flock of passionate followers. We found tons of fan pages, meme pages, Sopranos fashion pages, Sopranos food pages, Sopranos music pagesyou name it. It was obvious that social media was the domain of the youngand these teens, twentysomethings, and thirtysomethings were now streaming The Sopranos on their iPhones and Androids.

Wed known for a long time that we had legions of loyal fansmost of them close to our own age, give or take a decade or twobut the fact that we were being taken up by a whole new demographic gave us an idea. Not many shows have the ability to be passed down to a younger generation that embraces it as wholeheartedly as their parents did. And so we wondered, what if we tried to meet these newfound devotees on their own turfthe podcast?

The two of us had worked together on a ton of projects, both Sopranos-related and otherwise. We did a movie called Nicky Deuce, based on a book by Steve; the movie The Hungry Ghosts, written and directed by Michael, which Steve starred in; and a number of other films.