You’d think the cast of The Sopranos would be riding pretty high right now, with the hype nearly deafening in advance of Sunday’s final-season premiere. (This is, what, our 47th item on it?) But, in fact, they’re a bit paranoid. Why? Crazy fans. At the world premiere at Radio City Music Hall last week, Ray Abruzzo, who plays dim-witted Carmine Jr., told us about a woman calling him over to her table in a restaurant. “She says, ‘You’re the idiot!’ And in full loud voice, “He’s the idiot! He’s the idiot!’ People are turning around, having no idea what she’s talking about, except that I’m an idiot.” John Ventimiglia — you know him as restaurateur Artie Buco — says he often gets handed actual food, “like, ‘Here, I want you to try this gravy.’”
Vincent Pastore, who played whacked rat Big Pussy, gets more vitriol — word is that when Pussy squealed, a social club in Manhattan Xed Pastore’s face out of a cast picture it had on display. But Terry Winter, one of the show’s writers, admits the crazies come in handy. “The weirdest suggestion I got [to end the show] is that Carmela feng shuis the house and after that they have stream of bad luck that results in Anthony Jr. being murdered,” he says. “And every once in a while when we get stuck in the writer’s room, I tell David, ‘Hey, we’ve always got that feng shui thing.’” Uh-oh, did he just give it away? —Jada Yuan
