As much as it was a show about Italian-American gangsters, “The Sopranos” was a show about New Jersey. From scenes of domestic life in a North Caldwell McMansion to after-hours debauchery at a Lodi strip club, the show captured a snapshot of the Garden State in the late 1990s and 2000s, seducing viewers with its regional authenticity.
“The reality factor for ‘Sopranos’ is what’s so important and so effective,” said Mark Kamine, the series director and author of the upcoming memoir “On Locations,” which details his time working on the series. “If you’re photographing suburban homes, you can go to Long Island, you can go to Westchester.” But David Chase, the show’s creator, insisted that his Jersey characters were depicted in real Jersey.
“I just didn’t think there was any other way,” Mr. Chase, 78, said in an interview. “It was part of the process of only hiring Italian-American actors from the tri-state area.”
It was a costly decision. When the crew began making “The Sopranos,” which premiered 25 years ago this week, New Jersey didn’t offer tax breaks to productions filming there. But much of the pilot episode and many of the series’ exterior shots were filmed around local homes, businesses and streets.
“Obviously it paid off,” Mr. Kamine, 66, said.
Eventually, some of the interiors – including Tony’s house and the Bada Bing backroom – were built on sets in Queens, New York.
Here’s a look back at some of the show’s iconic locations in Jersey, why they were chosen and what’s there today.
Tony Soprano’s house
Built in 1987 at the end of a cul-de-sac in the leafy North Caldwell neighborhood, this 5,600-square-foot McMansion was decadent compared to the house Tony grew up in — fitting for a character who became wealthier than his parents but who felt he was losing touch with their values.
Its hilltop location was crucial. Comparing it to the cliché of “the mafia guy who walks into the restaurant and wants to sit with his back to the wall”, Mr Kamine said the elevation added an element of protection to Tony’s house. “No one is going to surprise him there.”
The first episode was filmed in the house, even though its owner was reluctant to accommodate a film crew. “After the pilot, he said, ‘We’re not doing it again.’ It was a disaster,’” Mr. Kamine said.
He convinced the owner to allow the show to film exteriors only, and eventually his attitude changed. “The rates would go up over the years and the show would become a success, and he expanded his house probably partly because of us,” Mr. Kamine said.
Mr. Chase recalls visiting several McMansions in pre-production, some of which were “almost comical” in their garishness. One main prerequisite: There had to be a swimming pool, Mr. Chase noted, “so the ducks could land in it.”
Over the years, Mr. Chase, who grew up not far from Tony’s home, couldn’t help but notice the changing landscape of New Jersey: the woods were cleared for subdivisions, the natural beauty became commercial streets. Tony’s fascination with ducks comes partly from his feeling that “something was wrong with our capitalist society, that we were destroying nature,” Mr. Chase said.
Livia Soprano’s house
About a 10-minute drive from Tony’s house, his mother, Livia, lives on a quiet street in Verona, New Jersey. Built in 1926, his house is smaller, older, and lacks the grandeur that Tony and his young cohort aim to project. The house becomes a divide between mother and son when Tony moves Livia into a retirement community.
“That palace you live in, up on that hill,” Livia says to Tony in Season 2. “Ugh.”
The chain-link fence surrounding the property symbolized Livia’s cold and repulsive nature. Mr Kamine said the team would often set up the fence when shooting there, only to remove it later.
Logistically, the location was ideal. “This house was in the right place for us, production-wise,” Mr. Chase said. “It was close to other places we were filming.”
Bada bing
The Bada Bing strip club, where Tony and his crew party in the front and do business in the back, is a real club called Satin Dolls, on Route 17 in Lodi, New Jersey. The owner was, fittingly, a man named Tony with the crowd. Connections.
“I never really feel comfortable in his office, wondering if there are any bugs,” Mr. Kamine writes in his book. The owner initially allowed the show to film there while the business was closed, but that proved difficult: The club was open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week. At first, they were buying out his lunches on Mondays and Tuesdays, and as the show became more popular, “he would just rub his hands when he saw me coming and be like, ‘How much money are you going to give me for this?’ hour ?’ “, said Mr. Kamine.
Over the years, Satin Dolls has attracted hordes of fans, even those who wouldn’t normally find themselves at an adult entertainment club. Vincent Pastore, 77, who played Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, recalled that at one point the club even offered a “Big Pussy cocktail.”
“This guy was cleaning,” he said.
Satriale pork store
Satriale’s — the deli and sandwich shop that Tony’s father took over when its owner couldn’t pay a gambling debt — wasn’t always Satriale’s. In the pilot episode, the meeting place was Centanni’s, a real butcher’s shop in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But the store’s owners told producers the filming was too disruptive to an already thriving business. (It is still open today.)
Needing a new location, Mr. Kamine found a vacant storefront on a shopping street in Kearny, New Jersey, that he thought could work. He tracked down the owner, who had purchased the place to open a cleaning business.
“He said to me, ‘I’m just starting my business, why should I do this?’ “, remembers Mr. Kamine. “But it ended up being a good deal for him, because we said, ‘We’ll pay you good rent to take over the store, and we’ll pay your rent for your office somewhere else.'”
The set designer transformed the storefront into a pig shop resembling what was seen in the pilot, including the pig mounted on the roof. The building was demolished in 2007 and is now a parking lot.
Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri, was disappointed when he learned he had been knocked down. “I would have liked to go to Satriale again, because I look at it, this time, with different eyes,” said Mr. Schirripa, 66.
Bucco’s Vesuvius
“It was a great home away from home,” Mr. Pastore said of the restaurant where Tony sat regularly with his two families. “It wasn’t a place where smart guys took their girlfriends. It was a place where Carmela and Tony went. It was a family restaurant.
A family restaurant that has exploded. The original Vesuvius, located on the ground floor of a building on the corner of South First Street and Elizabeth Avenue in Elizabeth, New Jersey, erupted during Season 1. To film the scene, said Mr. Chase, “We added a wing that exploded. that we destroyed,” Mr. Chase said. “The real restaurant was not affected.”
The name was inspired by Vesuvius, a restaurant where Mr. Chase grew up. “My parents used to go there on special occasions, and I was there when I was a kid and the food was great.”
Today, the place is home to Del Porto Ristorante.
Pizza land
Every week, in the atmospheric opening credits, Tony would drive past this little pizza shack in North Arlington, New Jersey, making it one of the most recognized fronts in Sopranos lore – even if no scene ever took place there. At one point, its former owner said, they would send pies, shrink-wrapped and on dry ice, to fans across the country.
Its current owner, Eddie Twdroos, said he still gets plenty of visitors who want to take photos – and maybe eat the pizza. After the store’s previous owner died in 2010, Mr. Twdroos was passing by when he saw that Pizza Land was closed. He had run a few pizzerias before, and he remembers thinking, “This is like a perfect place and a cute little shop with a lot of history behind it.” » So he decided to save him.
“You want everything to stay the same as it was from the show: the same storefront, the same sign at the top of the store, everything stayed the same,” said Mr. Twdroos, 53. “It’s a landmark.”