Don’t mess with Paulie Walnuts.
Chris Diamantopoulos, who visitor starred on the ultimate season of “The Sopranos,” stated Tony Sirico — who performed mobster Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri on the hit present — unintentionally “whacked” him with an actual pipe throughout a scene.
“Sirico had two pipes, a lead pipe and a rubber pipe, one to use when the camera was on me, and one to use when the camera was on him,” Diamantopoulos, 49, stated in an interview with Individuals printed Wednesday.
“Which one do you think he used on me the first time? The answer is it wasn’t the fake one,” Diamantopoulos stated.
The actor joked, “It was a rite of passage to be whacked by Paulie Walnuts.”
Diamantopoulos appeared within the fourth episode of the present’s remaining season in 2006 as Jason Barone, a household good friend of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini).
“I remember doing a scene with him where he was in the hospital. His character had to have stabbing pains in his abdomen,” Diamantopoulos recalled of his time working with Gandolfini, who died of a coronary heart assault in 2013.
“I remember him outside on a break, looking for a particular stone. He wanted to find a jagged rock, and he hid it under his hospital gown and had his arm over it so that when it called for the character to be in pain,” Gandolfini “pushed his arm down and the rock dug into his intestine, and it gave him an opportunity to react to it.
“I thought that was really a practical effect,” stated Diamantopoulos. “A really neat thing to see.”
Sirico died at 79 in July 2022.
David Chase, who created the beloved collection, remembered Sirico after his demise and the way a lot he loved writing for the late actor’s position.
“It was because of what he did with that stuff. You’d write a line, and then he’d do it, and the look on his face would be so incredibly laughable, and funny,” Chase, 79, advised Rolling Stone after Sirico’s passing. “And also you’d need to do extra. The best way he spoke.
“Here’s something I just thought of now: Everything that he got, he made his. Everything. He made it his own,” Chase added.
“The Sopranos” aired for six seasons, from 1999 to 2007.
Final 12 months, Selection ranked “The Sopranos” because the third-greatest TV present of all time, behind “Mad Men” and “I Love Lucy.”
