Tony’s house
As much as it was a show about Italian American mobsters, “The Sopranos” was a show about New Jersey. From scenes of domestic life in a North Caldwell McMansion to after-hours debauchery at a strip club in Lodi, the show captured a snapshot of the Garden State in the late 1990s and 2000s, beguiling viewers with its regional authenticity.
“The reality factor for ‘Sopranos’ is what’s so important and so effective,” said Mark Kamine, the show’s location manager and author of the upcoming memoir “On Locations,” which details his time working on the show. “If you’re shooting suburban houses, you can go to Long Island, you can go to Westchester.” But David Chase, the show’s creator, was insistent that his Jersey characters were depicted in the real Jersey.
“I just didn’t think there was any other way,” Chase, 78, said in an interview. “It was part of the whole thing of hiring only Italian American actors from the tristate area.”
It was a costly decision. When the team first started making “The Sopranos,” which premiered 25 years ago this week, New Jersey didn’t offer tax breaks for productions filming there. But much of the pilot episode and many of the show’s exterior shots were filmed around local homes, businesses and streets.
“Obviously, it paid off,” said Kamine, 66.
Eventually, some of the interiors — including Tony’s house and the backroom of the Bada Bing — were built out in sets in Queens, New York.
Here’s a look back at some of the show’s iconic Jersey locations, why they were chosen and what’s there today.
Built in 1987 at the end of a culde-sac in leafy North Caldwell, this 5,600-square-foot McMansion was decadent compared with the home Tony grew up in — fitting for a character who had become wealthier than his parents but felt he was losing touch with their values.
Its placement atop a hill was crucial. Comparing it to the cliché of “the mob guy who goes into the restaurant and wants to sit with his back to the wall,” Kamine said that the elevation added a protective element to Tony’s house. “No one’s gonna surprise him there.”
The first episode was filmed in the home, though its owner