“Sopranos” creator David Chase is finally coming clean about what happened to Tony Soprano in the abrupt series finale in 2007.
The HBO series’ final moments show Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini) sitting in a restaurant while Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” plays. Then the screen goes blank.
Since then, fans have debated the ending and what it revealed, or didn’t reveal, about what happened to Soprano.
“I had no idea it would cause that much … of an uproar,” Chase told The Hollywood Reporter in a new podcast.
Chase is now revealing his thoughts on the restaurant scene, but he’s also admitting he didn’t initially plan to end the six-season series that way.
“I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car,” Chase explained. “At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed.”
Chase said about two years before the scene was filmed, he drove by a restaurant in Bloomfield, New Jersey, that inspired him.
“It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know,” he said.
The series didn’t show the character being killed, and Chase was surprised by how some people reacted.
“It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar,” Chase said. “And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.
The show’s fans “wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ’God, you watched this guy for seven years, and I know he’s a criminal. But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years.′ That bothered me, yeah.”
You can hear Chase dish about the series in the podcast below.