Imperioli’s acting career going on vacation
Known for playing crooks and cops, star enjoying renaissance with comedic roles
If you know Emmywinning actor Michael Imperioli — and you probably do — you most likely know him from “The Sopranos,” the HBO mob drama that recently topped a Rolling Stone poll as the best series in history. Imperioli played Christopher Moltisanti, a heroinaddicted hothead who was a creature of impulsivity and id. Impatient, you could say.
“The Sopranos” wrapped in 2007. But Imperioli, 56, with his aquiline nose, his big, busy dark eyes, his spilling waves of hair, now gray, remains recognizable from the series.
These days, on-screen, Imperioli looks a little different. After years in police procedurals and gritty indies, he is appearing in two comedies: “This Fool,” a freshman series now available on Hulu, and the second season of “The White Lotus,” which begins Oct. 30 on HBO. “The Sopranos” had its funny moments. (See: “Pine Barrens,” a Christopher classic.) But Imperioli has rarely done comedy.
“I don’t really know how to be funny,” he said.
Yet he is funny. And in both “This Fool,” in which he plays Minister Payne, a scruffy activist, and “The White Lotus,” in which he stars as Dom Di Grasso, a Hollywood smoothie, the comedy comes from straddling the distance between whom these men would like to be and who they really are. As in “The Sopranos,” the laughs originate in a place of pain. Imperioli specified that if these shows are comedies, they are dark ones.
“I like dark comedy,” he said. “Because that’s like life, right? Because life is really funny. Then it’s really tragic.”
Imperioli grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, a working-class suburb about a dozen miles north of Times Square. At 17, he skipped out on college in favor of classes at the Actors Studio.
It took him five years to land his first role, in a play that didn’t pay and barely ran. He was in his mid-20s when Spike Lee began to cast him in small roles in films like “Jungle Fever,” “Malcolm X” and “Clockers.”
Imperioli’s most crucial early role came in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (1990), in which he plays Spider, a gofer shot point-blank by Joe Pesci’s Tommy. It was a small part, but it was memorable enough to persuade the casting directors of “The Sopranos” to bring him in for Christopher, a nephew and protege of James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano. David Chase, the series’s creator, remembers how immediately Imperioli elevated the character.
“There’s a lot of wild emotion within; he’ll go anywhere,” Chase said. “Christopher was so special, and he wouldn’t have been that special if it hadn’t been Michael. He would just have been a punk.”
What makes Imperioli’s performances fascinating, in “The Sopranos” and beyond, is a calibration of volatility and technique. His characters shift wildly from scene to scene, but that instability emerges from an actor in command of his instrument.
Or maybe not so absolute, not always. Back when he was working on “The Sopranos,” Christopher’s impulsivity began to bleed into his own behavior. There are stories from that
time — some funny, some not — of drunken shenanigans. Christopher was an addict, and Imperioli was wrestling with addiction, too, though he doesn’t love to discuss it. “I can’t stand hearing famous people talk about their things, their struggles,” he said. “It’s important, and it probably does help and inspire people, but I bristle at it.”
Addiction, he said, is often “a low-level search for God or spirituality or wholeness.” As “The Sopranos” ended, he found Tibetan Buddhism instead, which he and his wife, Victoria Imperioli, continue to practice.
He has worked steadily in the years since, often in boilerplate detective shows — “I had kids, and I wanted to put them through school” — or in indies that nobody saw.
But his youngest child is out of the house now, and
Imperioli seems to have begun a new chapter in his career.
In the early days of the pandemic, he and his former “Sopranos” co-star Steve Schirripa premiered a rewatch podcast, “Talking Sopranos,” that eventually worked through all seven seasons. The podcast wasn’t really about laying ghosts to rest — the ghosts are resting fine — but it gave Imperioli a new appreciation for the series and its influence. (It gave Chase, a guest on the final episode, appreciation, too: He is writing a new project for Imperioli and Schirripa.) He marveled at how teenagers and 20-somethings — toddlers at most in the 2000s — had become some of the show’s biggest fans.
The podcast and his social media presence — his Instagram feed is a joyful and often egoless celebration of the art and artists
that he loves — lent him a new prominence among relative youngsters, such as Chris Estrada, 39, a star and creator of “This Fool.” Asked to find a name actor for Minister Payne, a Unitarian cleric with a messianic streak, Estrada thought of Imperioli. The character had to feel just as flawed and human as everyone else, without veering into white savior mode. He knew that Imperioli could deliver that. And more, as it happened.
“He brought not only a conviction but also a sense of lightness to the character,” Estrada said. “And he made it so funny.”
Around this time, Imperioli was invited to audition for “The White Lotus.” He hadn’t seen the first season, but at his manager’s urging, he watched it. “The depth of it and the humanity and the compassion that Mike has for the human condition really got through to me,” he said, referring to the show’s creator, Mike White.
Dom’s questionable choices required an actor who wouldn’t repulse viewers, who would continue to fascinate even in ethically suspect waters. Which is why White wanted Imperioli.
“There’s something very accessible and likable about him,” White said. “He never repels you — he brings you in, and he’s so real.”
Imperioli appreciates this professional renaissance, this break, finally, from the kinds of roles he played before, even as there are obvious continuities.
In his 20s, he said, work was all he cared about. “Now I still love it, and of course I care about it,” he said. “But before you know it, I’m going to be on to the next life.”