James Gandolfini‘s performance as Tony Soprano on HBO’s “The Sopranos” is often cited as some of the best acting in TV history, but co-star Jamie-Lynn Sigler recently revealed that Gandolfini often questioned himself on the set of the Emmy-winning drama series. Sigler played Tony’s daughter, Meadow, on the show, which ran for six seasons and 86 episodes between 1999 and 2007.
“Jim was the type of scene partner where it felt like he was there and his only intention was to make me as good as I could be,” Sigler recalled on a recent episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s “Inside of You” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly). “And it had nothing to do with him. Every time I worked with him, I felt like his sole purpose was… ‘I’m going to help you give your best fucking take, Jamie.’”
“It had nothing to do with his confidence,” Sigler continued. “He would question himself. There would be moments where he’d be like, ‘I fucking suck,’ but I appreciated that because I’ve had those thoughts but I didn’t say them out loud because I don’t want anybody to know that I think I suck. He was confident enough to say it out loud.”
“I guess there was a confidence there, but I think it came more from him deeply caring,” she noted. “Deeply, deeply caring. He was an exceptional human being.”
Sigler said that she wasn’t able to realize the full power of “The Sopranos” when she was on the show as she was just a teenager at the time. Now 42 years old, she said she wishes “The Sopranos” cast could reunite to film just one more episode.
“I wish we could just do one week of filming right now, because of my awareness of the world and what that [show] was and what we were a part of… I just wish I could experience it, like one episode, give me one episode right now,” she said. “Just drop me back in for a couple days.”
What would this episode be about? “The family, some sort of internal struggle with the family, so a family-heavy one,” Sigler said. “I always loved moments when Meadow and Tony got quiet together. And it was — all our scenes when we would get quiet together the dialogue would actually be really limited. It would just be these heavy, pregnant pauses.”
All episodes of “The Sopranos” are available to stream on Max.