“It’s the writing, it’s all in the writing,” declares Steve Schirripa, a cast member of “The Sopranos. “The show holds up today.”
“The Sopranos” ended its groundbreaking six-season stretch on HBO in 2007.
That means it’s been off the air almost three times longer than its original eight-year run.
Yet the epochal mob drama about a psychiatric patient who also happens to be the murderous head of a North Jersey organized-crime family continues to be so beloved and revered that some of its cast members remain in great demand for public appearances, especially at casinos.
So why does “The Sopranos” still resonate at this late date?
“It’s the writing, it’s all in the writing,” declared Steve Schirripa, who will discuss the show on Saturday, Nov. 8, at Rivers Casino Philadelphia. “The show holds up today. It’s not corny, like some shows you watch from years ago where you go, ‘How the hell did people like that show?’
“The storyline is so much more than just a crappy mob show,” he added. “It goes so much deeper. It’s about so much more: family, capitalism, on and on and on. Very deep.”
To the 68-year-old actor – who portrayed Bobby “Bobby Bacala” Baccalieri – there’s also a timelessness to the series.
“Besides the computers and the cars, it looks like it was written yesterday,” he noted, “which is why so many younger people are streaming it now. I believe there’s more people watching the show now than when it was on.”
Because of streaming, Schirripa has fans as far as Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.
“Younger people have caught on to the show,” he explained. “They were too young to watch it then; now, they’re watching it with their parents. At our live shows, we get young people in their early 20s, college kids.
“Every day, you get stopped in the street by young people.”
Acting matters, too
The “live shows” referenced by Schirripa are discussions of all things “Sopranos” that he, Michael Imperioli – who played Tony’s hot-headed and erratic nephew, Christopher Moltisanti – and other cast members have been doing since before the series ended. Schirripa will be joined at Rivers Casino by Vincent Pastore, who played “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero.
Schirripa, who co-hosts the popular “Talking Sopranos” podcast with Imperioli, acknowledged when prodded that the show’s writing wasn’t the only thing that made the series the pop-culture tsunami it eventually became.
“The people they hired were very authentic actors,” he pointed out. “There’s nothing worse than a guy trying to play a mob guy that is just an impression of a mob guy.”
A different type of character
Schirripa’s character Bobby Bacala – introduced in the show’s second season – was not a hard-core gangster. His primary role was that of bodyguard/caregiver for Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano, the ruthless brother of Tony’s late father.
Bacala always stood out because he had a sweetness and empathy the other mobsters lacked. But true to his opinion about the show’s writing, Schirripa refused to take any credit for the way his character manifested itself on screen.
“There was just no input from me at all,” acknowledged the actor, who was the entertainment director at the old Rivera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas before launching his acting career. “It was on the page. The writing, as we know, was magnificent.”
According to the Brooklyn native, the difference between Bacala and the others was his back story.
“His father used to take care of Junior,” Schirripa said. “He was Junior’s driver, then Bobby kind of inherited (the job) when his father went down to Florida. So, he kinda fell into it. I mean, he grew up in the neighborhood, but I don’t think he was a wiseguy.”
A literary side hustle
While his post-“Sopranos” career has included numerous offers to play mobsters, Schirripa has avoided the typecasting trap, most notably by portraying Det. Anthony Abetemarco for 10 seasons on CBS’ “Blue Bloods” and Leo Boikewich for five seasons of the ABC teen drama, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”
But the Brooklyn native is also an author. Mining his Italian-American roots, Schirripa has written both alone and with collaborators a series of “Goomba” books, including 2002’s “A Goomba’s Guide to Life,” as well as 2013’s “Big Daddy’s Rules: Raising Daughters Is Tougher Than I Look.”
Two other books feature hero Nicky Deuce, a teenager whose adventures begin when he visits his grandparents in Brooklyn. And Schirripa and Imperioli co-authored “Woke Up This Morning,” whose cover declares it to be the definitive oral history of “The Sopranos.”
Schirripa’s latest literary effort is a kid’s book called “Willie Boy Eats the World.” It was inspired by his dachshund, who gained fame in a viral Instagram video of the actor sharing food with the animal. Its plot has the pup showing Schirripa around New York, “because I just eat Italian food.”
“He shows me that there’s a lot of different (food) choices around the city, the author added. “It’s a very sweet book.”
For tickets to the Rivers Casino Philadelphia show, go to etix.com.
