This is an extract from a piece from December 2011 on Tony Soprano, depression, and the end of the world. You can read the full piece here.
The thing with Tony Soprano is that I actually know him. Well, knew him. Well not him, but I knew James Gandolfini, the actor who played him. Because we did a film together a few years back. At the time, having never seen The Sopranos, I was quite relaxed around him. I noticed others looking nervous and staring at the floor in a half-witted way. But to me he just seemed like a large and quite nervous actor from New York.
I offered to show him a slice of west London life. One afternoon we met at the Serpentine. It was June and it was raining. I offered him a small pop-up umbrella but he didn’t want it, and we walked lopsidedly towards Kensington Palace. I say lopsidedly because he’s a big guy and I’m, well, not as big as him and we had a very different stride pattern. And I had an umbrella, and he didn’t. And the park was deserted, and very green and grey and wet. A perfect summer’s day. Quite romantic in a way.
We stumbled across the grass and stopped at the edge of the round pond and stood looking towards the palace. Keen to impress him, I told him that along the corridors of that house a succession of lovers had stolen their way into the bedroom of Princess Diana.
“‘Really?’
‘Oh yes, and flowers were strewn here as far as the eye could see when she died.’
‘Oh really? By the boyfriends?’
He seemed very taken with it all. In particular he liked the swans, arching and flapping or resting their heads on their backs.
‘Look at those ladies.’
‘Yes, aren’t they lovely — interestingly they all belong to the Queen and the Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. They can eat them but if anyone else does it’s High Treason.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Oh yes, and you’ve got to be careful,’ I said. ‘They look very graceful but they’ll have your arm off.’
‘Uh huh…’
He stepped towards one, which spread its wings and hissed at him.
‘Oh I see… okay baby, don’t worry…’ and he backed away.
I invited him into my small car and drove away from the palace into Notting Hill. He was very approving of the wide streets and large white houses on Dawson Place and Chepstow Villas. I tried to impress him with tales of bohemia and high society mixing there in the Sixties and pointed out the house in Powis Square where Nic Roeg had filmed Performance. We drove under the Westway and the houses became more shabby, and as the rubbish started to blow across the road he seemed slightly less excited by his surroundings. At the north end of Portobello Road we crossed into Golborne Road.
“‘This area is really the last bit where that original spirit of Notting Hill remains.’
‘Seems kinda sad… shabby.’
‘Yes, shabby chic… you’d be amazed how expensive it is…’
‘Really?’
‘You see we have an aristocracy and it’s essentially degenerate, and they live in all these beautiful old houses which they let fall apart, and that feeling of distressed grandeur has become a recognised English style and is aspired to now by people in the middle classes too.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And this is where I live.’
‘Where?’
‘Up there above that purple shop.’
‘The empty one with the broken glass and the peeling paintwork?’
‘Yes, yes, the four windows above that.’
He was silent for a moment.
‘You’re famous here, right?’
‘Er well, yes, um … sort of, yes.’
He was silent again, assessing me.
‘I see — so you choose to live like this?’
‘Er ah. Er, yes, I suppose I do. Would you like to come in?’
The actor who played the depressed mafia boss. He understood about choices. Maybe he learnt it off the therapist while in character.
I led Tony Soprano up my small staircase into my flat and he sat on the sofa and had a cup of tea, and we talked about girls or something, and he looked around him and shortly afterwards I took him back to his hotel.
So in my recent gloom, I have been sitting in the same sofa, assessing my choices, and watching The Sopranos. And there was this fabled monster, this monumental tragic Italian from New Jersey burning up the screen. In the opening episodes, where he gets obsessed with the ducks on his swimming pool, I shouted ‘It’s like the swans!’ at my television.
I checked my phone to see if I still had his number. I did. I sent him a text.
“‘In case this is still you, I’m sitting here watching The Sopranos ten years after everyone else. If I’d seen it before we did In the Loop I would have been too intimidated to talk to you! Tom H.’
A text came back.
“‘I was the one intimidated, I had no clue what the fuck was going on in that film. Will see you one of these days. Take care.’