The Sopranos Actor Got Drunk And Did A Terrible Thing With His Emmy
A The Sopranos actor did something a little different with his Emmy Award after winning, chucking it in the garbage can
This article is more than 2 years old
Fans of The Sopranos have had a pretty good last couple of months with the show’s long-awaited prequel movie finally hitting HBO Max and a Super Bowl commercial returning us briefly to the titular (remaining) family. It’s been a nice throwback to one of the greatest series ever made, a show that helped usher in the era of prestige television. But one actor might not have been all that impressed with the hype around the series when it was originally on the air. Recently, it came out that Michael Imperioli actually threw away the Emmy Award he won for portraying Christopher Moltisanti on the series.
In an interview with Noisey (via ScreenRant) Michael Imperioli detailed what it was like to win the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, with both the positive and negatives of the experience. In that, he also talked about what actually happened the night of the awards show when he went home with the hardware. Apparently, after a discussion with his wife, while the booze was taking effect, he made the decision to actually ditch the award in the trash. Check out part of what Imperioli had to say about taking home the Emmy for his role in The Sopranos:
“That night I won, my wife and I go to bed she says ‘You know you think you’re a really big deal with this Emmy,’ and then she goes, ‘I am not impressed’ and she said ‘And if you had any balls you’d take that Emmy and throw it right in the garbage. The booze had been flowing, I took that Emmy threw it in the garbage. We both went to bed, wake up the next morning 11 o’clock, first thing she says, ‘Can you order coffee? And don’t forget to take your Emmy out of the garbage.’”
So though the Emmy Award Michael Imperioli won for The Sopranos did land in the garbage can, it doesn’t appear to have stayed there forever. It seems like mostly a symbolic thing about the nature of awards shows and whether or not they have any real “value” or “meaning”. Imperioli, to his credit, spoke about this in a couple of ways, admitting that they certainly help an actor’s career because of the industry recognition. But on a base level, they are essentially hollow representations of a job well done.
On The Sopranos, Michael Imperioli’s role of Christopher Moltisanti is widely regarded as one of the best characters in the history of television. The tortured nephew of the boss of the family Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Christopher’s arc is as important as any other character in the series. When we first meet him he’s a rising soldier in the family, but struggles with addiction, among other things, are critical to the series as a whole. And Christopher becomes one of the more tortured among a group of already tortured characters. It was a masterful and tragic performance that involved some of the most heartbreaking scenes you’ll ever see on the small screen.
To his credit, Michael Imperioli winning an Emmy Award for his part in The Sopranos was a long time coming for the actor. He had been nominated four times total for his work on the show, often sharing a nomination with another actor in the show. But he did finally take home the award in 2004. It was well-deserved considering what he was able to accomplish on the screen, a sympathetic figure who was actually kind of a monster for what he was forced to do for the Family.
The Sopranos is making a mini-comeback of late with The Many Saints of Newark releasing last year. The story followed Christopher’s father Dickie Moltisanti and his mentorship of a young Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini’s son Michael. And of course, there was the commercial that reunited Meadow and AJ Soprano.
