Edie Falco Filmed A Scene For The Many Saints Of Newark, But It Got Cut
"The Many Saints of Newark" is set to be a big Italian family reunion — the actual family, not the mafia kind. Regular series director Alan Taylor is returning to helm the prequel film based on the classic HBO show, along with a whole host of familiar characters with new actors perfectly embodying the roles. But at one point, there were apparently plans to bring back at least one original cast member from the series — Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano, the wife of mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) — and have her reprise her role for a brief scene. As tends to be the case with crime families, however, that idea was ultimately put six feet under.
A Familiar Face
After the way "The Sopranos" controversially ended its run on HBO in June of 2007, perhaps it's fitting that there would be a question over how exactly "The Many Saints of Newark" would open. In an interview with NME (via Entertainment Weekly), director Alan Taylor opened up about the now-deleted scene that would've featured Edie Falco making her grand return as Carmela Soprano. Reportedly, this would have served as the initial scene of the prequel film. Here's what Taylor had to say about the decision — both to bring her back in the first place, and to end up cutting the scene from the final film.
"We had Edie come in and she dressed up as Carmela and we shot something with her and it wound up not being in the final movie but it was a great excuse to see her again. She's so ridiculously talented and she's also one of these people who — and it seems to frequently be women — that manage to be perfect actors and also the sanest people you've ever met in your life ... It was good to see her again."
There was some confusion as to how best launch the movie. How to start the movie. So we tried a few things and that was one of them. If you've seen the movie you'll see that we begin it in a very different way now but that wasn't always the idea."
Before anyone freaks out that certain parts of "The Many Saints of Newark" may have been in flux during production, this sounds like business as usual when it comes to figuring out the specific beats of a movie — a process that tends to abide by trial-and-error, rather than the narrative of having everything perfectly planned out from the scripting phase. Much of the same applies to television shows like "The Sopranos" as well, with exciting storylines that proved to be a huge hit with viewers having actually been conceived when the writers had gotten themselves stuck in a corner and needed to improvise a way out.
Taylor goes further in teasing other ideas that had been on the table, explaining that, "Not to give away too much but, when you make a movie you're not exactly sure the final shape it's going to be, and we — believe it or not — shot a few things that included other cast members." It's unclear if he merely meant that Falco would've shared the screen with cast members of the movie, or if Taylor and "The Sopranos" creator David Chase had intended for other original members of the original series to make a brief appearance in the movie as well.
Whatever the case, those trying to catch up on "The Sopranos" don't have much more time left to finish their binge. "The Many Saints of Newark" arrives in theaters and on HBO Max on October 1, 2021.