Three years after Edie Falco revealed its existence to the world and 14 years after it was actually filmed, footage from the secret The Sopranos reunion star James Gandolfini filmed for LeBron James has finally surfaced online. On the latest episode of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast (via Variety), Torre shares the unearthed footage which features Gandolfini and Falco reprising their roles as Tony and Carmela Soprano for a clip set two years after the series’ finale. You can check it out here.
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The clip sees Carmela tell Tony that she’s “so glad” that they moved to New York and that life is so much better for them. Tony agrees that lie is good, “even if we are in the witness protection program.” They then talk about how they just need to find Tony’s “friend LeBron” a place to live and thy discuss what kind of places the basketball star would want to live in. The video was part of an overall video that was meant to help the New York Knicks recruit James to their team.
Falco First Revealed the “Reunion” in 2021
As basketball fans know, James didn’t end up going to New York during his 2010 Free Agency and Falco revealed in 2021 that she couldn’t believe that the “reunion” video didn’t work, in addition to talking ab it more about the overall project.
“I couldn’t believe that it didn’t work,” Falco explained at the time. “Not so much because of The Sopranos. I just thought, it’s New York. How does anyone say no to New York, for God’s sake? But he did!”
“I do remember doing it and what is absolutely amazing to me is I didn’t know who LeBron James was,” she added. “We got those requests all the time back then and Jim Gandolfini, he did nothing. And somehow, he agreed to this thing, which I was shocked by. I thought it was a prank when someone said Jim’s going to do it.”
A The Sopranos “Reunion” Would Be Unlikely Given the Series Finale
While the “reunion” in the video for James is interesting, a genuine The Sopranos reunion working out with the family moving to New York is unlikely because Tony didn’t actually survive it. While what happened after the cut-to-black has become one of television’s biggest debates, Sopranos creator David Chase confirmed a few years ago that the viewers who assumed that the man who entered the diner killed Tony Soprano were correct and that the plan was always to have Tony die, though how it went down in the finale wasn’t exactly always the plan.
“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black,” Chase said. “I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New. York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed.”
Chase went on to explain that when he was driving around one day, a chance discovery of a 2-hour diner shifted his idea for the ending and led to how the final episode of The Sopranos played out.
“But I think I had this notion — I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant,” he said. “it was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was like, two years before.”
What do you think about the lost The Sopranos “reunion”? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
