There are arguably few routes much less glamorous than that which snakes westward from the Lincoln Tunnel to the New Jersey Turnpike and on to Newark. (Carbon-monoxide vibes!) Until you’re a fan of “The Sopranos,” through which case that grey path takes on a mythic high quality. “We needs to be enjoying the track,” the actor Alessandro Nivola stated on a latest morning, as his automobile sped previous the commercial chimneys of North Jersey, simply as Tony Soprano’s does within the opening credit of the present. Nivola started to sing the primary bars of the theme—a morning, a gun—unshowily however with conviction.
Nivola, who’s forty-nine, was carrying denims and a grey button-down, and a heavy silver I.D. bracelet. Subsequent month, he’ll star within the film “The Many Saints of Newark,” a “Sopranos” prequel, co-written by the present’s creator, David Chase, and directed by Alan Taylor. Within the crime drama, which is about towards the backdrop of the 1967 Newark race riots, Nivola performs Dickie Moltisanti, father to Christopher (a child within the film), and mentor to the younger Tony (performed by Michael Gandolfini, the son of the late James Gandolfini, who starred within the sequence because the psychologically tortured Mafia boss). Though Nivola is an element Italian, his background will not be Moltisanti-esque. “My grandfather, who was a sculptor, was initially from Sardinia, and he moved to New York within the forties,” Nivola stated. “Him and my grandmother lived a sort of bohemian existence in Greenwich Village, which is the place my dad was born, and it wasn’t precisely the imply streets of the outer boroughs.” Nivola’s father tried to cover his heritage: “In boarding faculty, he modified his identify from Pietro to Pete.” He went on, “However, by the point I used to be born, he’d rediscovered his Italianness, and I used to be saddled with probably the most Italian identify in historical past.”
To organize for the function of Dickie, a mafioso whose charisma conceals a jumble of violent and tender urges, Nivola spent months with a dialect coach. (“Virtually everybody can at this level do the ‘Goodfellas’ imitation, you understand”—his voice slid briefly into gabagool territory—“and I wished to get way more particular than that.”) He additionally labored with a coach. (“It’s by no means talked about within the film, however I figured, like numerous these guys, Dickie may need been a boxer as a child, and I modified my physique quite a bit, to look extra imposing.”) He immersed himself within the tradition, studying books about Newark and exploring native landmarks. Now he wished to revisit one, the Museum of the Previous First Ward, a modest house housed on the grounds of St. Lucy’s Church.
On his cellphone, Nivola pulled up a picture, taken on his earlier go to, of a stained-glass window donated to St. Lucy’s by Richie (the Boot) Boiardo, the mid-century Mob boss whose crime household, David Chase as soon as stated, loosely impressed “The Sopranos.” “Initially, the Boot lived in Newark,” Nivola stated. “Later, he moved to this wonderful property out in Livingston, after he mysteriously got here into some huge cash.” A church secretary, having heard about Nivola’s new film, approached. “They filmed a scene from the present at my home—the place Uncle Junior is dropping it, and he comes, in his pajamas, to a neighbor’s door to ask for ice cream,” she advised him. “My son was actually excited—they gave him a director’s chair.”
Bob Cascella, a retired probation officer who has been entrusted with curating the museum, wasn’t far behind. “Are you the son?” he requested.
“No, I play Dickie Moltisanti,” Nivola stated.
“The daddy got here right here as soon as,” Cascella went on, undeterred. “I stated to him, ‘Hello, Tony!’ And he laughed. I suppose he was doing analysis.” He ushered Nivola into the basement, the place each inch of wall was coated with photograph shows. “I name them ‘ideas,’ ” Cascella stated. “I’m not skilled. I don’t know, however that’s what I name them.” He started his First Ward spiel: wedding ceremony ceremonies (“I inform folks, ‘You don’t have to be married in St. Lucy’s to get on this wall, you simply have to have one of many couple be from the Ward!’ ”), social golf equipment, feast days, doo-wop teams (“Right here’s Pesci in considered one of them. He actually paid his dues. Do you know he was a hair stylist?”). At a show that includes footage of Boiardo, Cascella paused. “I grew up with folks like on ‘The Sopranos,’ and so they weren’t regarded down on by any means,” he stated. “A lot of the guys, they don’t hassle anyone. They reside on the identical block, they’re going round. My mom used to wager with one man, a bookie—he used to take numbers from her! If you happen to get cash from them and also you don’t pay it again, what do you count on? It’s enterprise!” Cascella laughed, and Nivola joined, somewhat faintly. “Now, the killers, guys who’re actual nuts, that’s a unique factor. Like what’s-his-name on the present. Ralphie? The one who killed his pregnant girlfriend.” (A harrowing plot level from Season 3.) “Now that was a nut. However many of the youngsters on this neighborhood, they may have been like Tony. Or they may have been like me.” ♦
