The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli has said he thinks many of the characters in the show would now be supporters of Donald Trump.
The actor played Christopher Moltisanti on the legendary HBO crime saga, which ran from 1999 to 2007, and in a new interview, he has speculated about where the central figures in the show would fall politically if it had been made in the current era.
Speaking to The Independent, Imperioli was asked about how the shifts in ideology since 2007 would have impacted how the show was written. “The show is about the American dream, especially through the eyes of immigrants,” he said. “I think that would be one of the big themes if it was made today: the current climate in the U.S. and what they’re doing to immigrants.”
“The fact is that these characters are all immigrants, but I think a lot of them would probably be Trump supporters, oddly enough. So how do they reconcile those things? When Italians came over – and people forget this, or they don’t want to see it – a lot of them were undocumented.”
The show followed Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as he navigated his domestic Italian-American family life with his role as a Mafia leader and his own mental health struggles. Imperioli’s Christopher was one of Tony’s proteges, and the actor picked up an Emmy in 2004 for his performance.
Elsewhere, in October, it was reported that the show’s creator David Chase was returning to TV with a new show about an infamous mind control experiment by the CIA. Titled Project: MJUltra, it will be a limited series and his first job as showrunner since The Sopranos.
Earlier last year, Chase also looked back on The Sopranos in a biography of James Gandolfini’s life. In it, he recalled being shown the actor as he was being considered for the lead, and initially thinking he wasn’t “threatening” enough to play a mob boss.