Sopranos Star Reveals A Goodfellas Scene That Sent Him To The Hospital
Sopranos and White Lotus actor Michael Imperioli reflects on a dangerous on-set incident that occurred while filming Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas.
Michael Imperioli shared a little-known story from the Goodfellas set in a recent interview with Chris Wallace. Imperioli is best known for the role of Christopher Moltisanti in HBO’s The Sopranos, but his career has covered a wide range of spaces. He’s appeared on Food Network’s Chopped, released books as a fiction author, and even plays guitar in the art-rock band Zopa
As for scripted, onscreen activity, Imperioli has appeared scantly in television and movies since the Sopranos ended in 2007. He played the role of a detective in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and appeared in Spike Lee’s remake of the Korean film Oldboy. In television, he’s had stints on long-running shows like Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. But Imperioli remains most known for his portrayal of Moltisanti in The Sopranos and his lesser role in the legendary mobster film Goodfellas.
Imperioli appeared on CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace to reflect on some lesser-known stories from his career. One of these stories came from the set of the Martin Scorcese film Goodfellas, which tracks a group of mobsters operating in New Jersey. In the scene in question, Imperioli was supposed to fall back into a glass table after his character had been shot. But when he fell through the prop table, he was cut by broken glass. Imperioli was brought to the hospital, where nurses thought he’d been shot due to the fake bullet holes in his chest from the film set. Imperioli’s snarky account can be read below:
“Three bullet holes in my chest and it’s Queens, New York. They think I’m about to die… So, they put me on a stretcher, wheel me into trauma, and I’m telling them what’s happening. They won’t listen to me. Finally, they start going into my shirt and see all the squibbing, the wires. I said, I told you, I’m doing a movie. I cut my fingers.”
Will Michael Imperioli Return To The World Of The Sopranos?
Imperioli is no stranger to dropping interesting tidbits. In a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Imperioli teased a new mystery script he’s working on with The Sopranos creator David Chase. The mystery script comes in the wake of last year’s release of the Soprano’s standalone film The Many Saints of Newark, which featured Imperioli as a ghost-narrator. The script would mark a third collaboration between the two Sopranos alums, but whether this new collaboration has anything to do with The Sopranos is still debatable. Imperioli refused to elaborate on the subject of the new movie. But his refusal to comment wasn’t exactly a denial, and the involvement of fellow Sopranos actor Steve Schirripa (Bobby Baccala in the original series) only adds fuel to the flames. Any continuation of Imperioli and Schirripa’s Sopranos characters would have to be set during or before the show’s original timeline, seeing as both characters die late in the original show’s run.
Sopranos-related or not, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to imagine a mobster setting for Imperioli’s mystery collaboration with Chase and Schirripa. After all, Imperioli got his start in the genre with 1990’s Goodfellas. But Imperioli has also demonstrated versatility over the years–most recently in HBO’s The White Lotus, which premiered this past Sunday. The subject matter of Imperioli’s mystery film will remain hush-hush for now. Until more information becomes available, mobster-film fans and Sopranos fans will have to keep their fingers crossed.
