For those still wondering 15 years later what happened in the aftermath of “The Sopranos” finale, the 2022 Super Bowl just gave us a clue.
“Sopranos” stars Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler, who respectively played Meadow and A.J. in the series, reprised their roles in a Chevrolet Silverado EV advertisement directed by series creator David Chase. The commercial re-enacts the opening sequence of “The Sopranos,” in which James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano drives from Manhattan to New Jersey as “Woke up This Morning” plays. Series cinematographer Phil Abraham once again served as the director of photography.
Chase told Yahoo that the shoot was “fun” and called back to his original inspiration for the series. “[The opening] was a big part of the series when it first started, and I’ve loved [the Jersey Meadowlands] since age 8, coming back every other Sunday for my grandmother’s house,” Chase said. “It’s so mysterious.”
Fittingly, Sigler’s Meadow is behind the wheel, implying that she now has a hand in her father’s empire. “She was always her father’s daughter,” Sigler said. “She’s a powerhouse.”
Chase noted that he “always figured Meadow is a lawyer somewhere.”
The commercial ends with Meadow meeting A.J. at a restaurant that’s a callback to where Tony was presumably murdered in the finale. Gary Pascoe, the chief creative officer for Commonwealth/McCann, the Interpublic Group agency that works for GM, told Variety that it was Chase’s idea to have Meadow and AJ drive up a place that would summon thoughts about where Tony may have met his demise.
“He thought it added another element of intrigue, i.e. Who else is there? Why that restaurant? There’s a marina behind it, so what does that mean? He was really focused on the ending and getting it right,” Pascoe said. “So, on set, we talked about the ending right up to the moment we shot it. Literally. It was changing by the minute, which was a little stressful, but, when he shot it, we all knew we had it.”
Pascoe continued, “There are no Hollywood backlots, no CGI locations in this spot — that’s Jersey in 2022 in January. We even shot on film, rather than digital, to match the original 1999 look and feel. Authenticity can’t be faked, so we didn’t try.”
Sigler added, “I think [the finale] was perfect, I truly do. If the show was going to have to end at that moment, that’s the way it needed to. It wasn’t finite. My interpretation was always that the family’s sitting there and there are all these threats to Tony and his wife and kids, and he’s clocking them, but he’s also present with his family. That’s the reality of their lives. Whether his life ended in that moment or 10 years from then, it showed that this is what their life is going to be like forever.”
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