The Sopranos
Steve Schirripa, the broad-shouldered, burly actor best known for playing mob soldier Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on HBO’s The Sopranos, is teasing a congenial older gentleman about his massive Stetson, which sticks out at this event in Las Vegas’ pure nightclub. That the older gentleman is poker godfather Doyle Brunson doesn’t seem to fluster the actor.
After all, Schirripa lived in Vegas for over twenty years, holding down jobs ranging from bouncer to maitre ‘d. He even worked simultaneously as entertainment director at the Riviera while he played Bacala during his first season on HBO’s cult phenomenon. He does not play at any of the online poker rooms, but he knows the Sin City like his pocket.
It was while making the rounds at the Stardust and the Horseshoe in those early years that he became familiar with some of the local poker pros like Chip Reese and Brunson. Back then he simply knew them as “diehard poker guys.” Today, the world knows them as legends. It’s among the thousand or so reasons why Vegas looks very different to Schirripa on this fun November night. “I just knew guys who lived there that made a living playing poker. Those days are over, I guess. It’s a whole different ballgame now,” he reminisces. “Vegas is a good city if you’re in your 20s or you’re retired. It’s not for me. I moved there when I was 21. It was great.”
You can tell by the way he teases Brunson that he still feels a little comfortable in Sin City. Of course, it helps that his friends from TV’s most notorious crime family have also descended on PURE for the first annual Comedy Cares Celebrity Poker Tournament, hosted by Sopranos creator David Chase and the show’s star James Gandolfini.
They’re all here, the names reading like the box score at a typical Italian family dinner: Christopher Moltisanti, Uncle Junior, Paulie Walnuts, Silvio Dante, Johnny Sack. Practically the entire cast has got Schirripa’s back. And for anyone who knows the group, that’s not so unusual. It might not outlast the considerable shadow cast on pop culture by HBO’s signature powerhouse, but the friendships these men have made on and off the set are practically inconceivable by Hollywood standards. So what better way for the gang to come together over a few hands of Hold ‘em in Las Vegas?
“I love them like family,” says Steve Van Zandt, the E Street Band guitarist whose role as Soprano consigliere Dante is one of television’s least likely reinventions. “I don’t like them very much but I love them like family.” It’s a typical backhanded compliment among the cast, who has arrived at the $15,000-buy-in tournament to help raise money for a 460-000-square-foot addition to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
It’s not the only time you’ll see this group together after hours. Series stars Schirripa, Michael Imperioli, John Ventimiglia, and Vince Curatola host a live variety show, Comedy You Can’t Refuse. Imperioli and Schirripa tell jokes while Ventimiglia and Curatola sing their favorite Sinatra standards in a show that has headlined at the Vegas Hilton, Harrah’s in Atlantic City, and Foxwood’s.
Curatola, the razor-sharp actor known for playing imprisoned underboss Sack, even teaches scene study at Studio Dante, the Manhattan theater founded by Imperioli, whose role as the thuggish Moltisanto eventually helped him graduate to the show’s writing staff. Like the event at PURE, you’ll occasionally see the Sopranos cast come together to help the helpless.
When Schirripa began organizing charity events benefiting the New York Fire Department (two of his childhood friends from Brooklyn were FDNY firefighters who died on 9/11), the rest of the cast was there to help. Same with Curatola’s work with the Hackensack University Medical Center, and Tony Sirico (who plays Walnuts) and his efforts for St. Jude’s Hospital in Brookville, New York.
When Schirripa beats Doyle Brunson at the Comedy Cares poker tournament, you know he’s going to savor the moment. He stands and makes allusions to striking out Babe Ruth, to knocking out a legend. Brunson can only sit back and laugh. “I made a fool of myself,” Schirripa admits about the victory celebration.
Van Zandt, a poker novice among the cast members, makes the tournament’s final table alongside comedian Ray Romano and Sopranos actress Aida Turturro, herself a beginner at the game. It’s around this time that the party kicks into high gear. Van Zandt credits his accomplishment to the tutelage of “my personal poker gurus, Johnny Marinacci and Mike Scelza,” themselves members of the extended Sopranos family who have appeared on the show.
The rest of the cast is simply dumbfounded. “Steve Van Zandt has hardly played poker in his life. That’s why I question, is it luck or is it skill?” Schirripa says. “I think it’s a combination. Jim Gandolfini, he knows how to play. Some of the other guys, so so.”
“To the people I love,” fictional mob boss Tony Soprano toasted towards the end of the show’s fifth season. “Nothing else matters.” The Sopranos gang uses the break to come together. “Over the last seven or eight years, we have become very much like an off-camera family,” says Imperioli. “We had mostly known one another from past TV and movies and just being part of the New York acting community. I think it’s part of the chemistry that also makes the show so successful.”
It’s not unusual for a lot of that camaraderie to come out in a poker game. Certain cast members even enjoy the odd game in their trailer during filming. Per the show’s dramatic license, the most intense hands tend to be interrupted by a rap on the door and a request to get back on the set. “We play sometimes in our trailers. We scream, we curse,” says Curatola. “If we filmed it, you would think it was part of the episode. We get cantankerous and we throw things.”
Tags: Doyle Brunson, final table, Frank Sinatra, Jim Gandolfini, poker charity, poker tournament, Ray Romano, skill or luck, Sopranos, Van Zandt