The Sopranos is a HBO crime drama which stars James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano,
boss of the New Jersey Crime family, as he manoeuvres and navigates his way through mob life
and family life. Throughout the series’ 6 season, Tony comes across many adversaries,
many psychopathic individuals such as Ritchie April. There is perhaps
no greater psychotic character in the show than the cunning Ralph Cifaretto,
a captain in Tony’s own crew and one of the highest earners in the family.
Unstable, volatile, highly obnoxious and a huge fan of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator,
Ralph is often at odds with many characters in the show, even Tony himself,
Some of the most despicable acts in the show are attributed to him,
including the disturbing beating and murder of a 20 year old pregnant stripper.
He mentors Jackie Jr and inspires him to rob a mob card game, which causes the death of Jackie Jr. he
makes a weight joke about Johnny Sack’s wife, the underboss of a powerful New York family,
which almost ends his own death and cause bad blood between New York and New Jersey.
He allegedly has a fire started at a horse stables for the insurance where Pie-O-My, a racehorse
beloved to Tony, is badly injured and needs to be put to sleep. When Tony comes to Ralph’s
house and confronts him, the two end up coming to blows and Ralph is strangled and killed by Tony.
In spite of his volatile nature, Ralph has emerged as a fan favourite character.
He may be utterly despicable, but he is funny as hell,
and many of the most comical scenes of the show are as a result of him and his shenanigans.
He’s probably the closest The Sopranos got to having Joe Pesci on the show.
Played immaculately by Joe Pantoliano, of The Matrix and Memento fame,
Ralph fully deserves his reputation as one of the best of the many colourful characters on the show,
and stories, quotes and interviews over the years suggest that Pantoliano,
also known as Joey Pants, enjoyed his time on the series and was loved by the cast.
However, it appears some bad blood had emerged towards the end of The Soprano’s run,
long after Joey Pants had left the show. In 2007, Pantoliano was upset about a Vanity Fair photo
spread, which featured his dead character decapitated. As Sopranos fans know, after
Ralph was killed by Tony, Tony and Christopher Moltisanti dispose of the body. Christopher cuts
Ralph’s head and hands off with a meat cleaver, and his body is wrapped and thrown into a quarry.
Now, in the Vanity Fair photo spread, Ralph’s head is used as part of the promotoional material
to promote the final season of the show, but it isn’t Pantoliano that we see in the shot,
as he refused to take part in the spread. It’s a body double,
and it’s caused the actor to be come angry, but not seemingly because of not being paid
money or royalties or anything like that – apparently t’s because his three young
daughters saw the photo and it disturbed them. Understandable then, I think.
Pantoliano reportedly sent a furious letter directly to Sopranos creator David Chase
expressing his frustration and disappointment,
and claiming that his character’s inclusion in the photo was in poor taste.
Words like “despicable” and “diabolical” were used in the letter,
and Pantoliano added that his image was used without his permission.
Interestingly, Joey Pants was the only deseaced Sopranos actor at the time
to turn down the chance to appear in the Vanity Fair spread, with the likes
of Drea De Matteo and Vincent Pastore agreed to reprise their characters for the spread.
This was all more than 10 years ago but I wonder if Pantoliano still has hard feelings about the
situation, or if the likes of David Chase took offense to him taking offense. I wonder if this
has anything to do with why, at the time of the making of this video, Joey Pants is one of the few
primary actors on the show who has yet to appear on Steve Schiripa and Michael imperioli’s podcast
Talking Sopranos, and he isn’t scheduled to make an appearance. By the time I release this video
Talking Sopranos might be over, but they’ve had all sorts of actors on there, the actors who
played Carmela, Artie, Rosalie, Ritche April, Silvio, Adriana, Rusty, Eugene, Uncle Junior,
Hesh, Pussy, Little Carmine, Furio, Carlo, Janice, and that animal Blundetto. Practically everyone
who is alive and healthy has been on the podcast. Tony Sirico hasn’t been on it, and apparently he
is in poor health. I don’t think the guy who played Vito has been on it, and I know there
were issues between him and the other cast members with him making out that he and James Gandolfini
were very close when they weren’t, so that really only leaves Pantoliano as the only major omission.
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