The Sopranos’ James Gandolfini walked out of his intervention, dared HBO exec to fire him: ‘Aw, f— this’

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1. > “We did an intervention with him at my apartment in New York,” Albrecht recalled in the new Max docuseries Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos. “That was to try to get him to go to a facility for rehab. We’d had a lot of friction by that point, and the ruse was that I was inviting Jimmy over so we could talk things through and kind of clear the air.”

   > Attendees included Gandolfini’s sisters and several of his castmates, said Albrecht, so the star was quick to figure out the situation. “He walked in, and he saw everybody sitting there, and he went, ‘Aw, f— this.’ And he walked out,” Albrecht said. “Everybody went, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy!’ And he turned to me and he went, ‘Fire me,’ and he left.”

2. They should have brought wine in a can

3. What was he addicted to?

4. One of the classic monologues from Sopranos for me is when Silvio reads aloud during Christopher’s intervention and he reads it **completely** flat and finishes with “disgusting”.

   It’s fucking genius

5. “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no.”

   – Amy Winehouse,
   who also badly needed to go to rehab

6. HBO exec ‘You’re weak. You’re outta control. And you’ve become an embarrassment to yourself and everybody else.’

7. Intervention was real? I thought it was a movie.

8. RIP Mr. Gandolfini

9. I worked for Albrecht at Starz. I think it’s safe to say he got lucky with the shows he picked at HBO. In his first few months he cancelled Party Down, put an end to Spartacus, and spent $7 million on the first episode alone of Camelot. One of the biggest bombs in tv history. He also is tiny and abuses women.

10. I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 2007 when Gandolfini was grand marshal. Standing right against the barricades near the end of the route, I see his float coming down the street. As it comes closer, there he is at the top on this smallish platform, lashed to a pole like Odysseus tied to the mast, so slobberingly drunk that he could barely stand, let alone wave. Just tied up there, 20 feet in the air with this half-happy, half-palsied smile on his sweaty face.

    Being hammered as well, the crowd cheered him and then began debating if he was trashed or was having a medical emergency up there, but no one on the float had seem alarmed so we decided he was okay. When the Mardis Gras crowd thinks you might have drunk too much, you probably have a problem.

11. My dad went to rehab with James. I met him during a visit. Super nice guy.

12. Just watched him in his last film, The Drop with Tom Hardy. Good movie, but Gandolfina looked terrible. His performance is great, but you could see his physical state was in fast decline. Bloated, moved awkwardly and he died only a month after filming wrapped.

13. Dumb question: what was he addicted to?
    I never heard a word about it and only have heard good stories about this man.

14. So, his last days (or most behaviour) was closer to his character in “Killing Them Softly”. Savage.

15. His life was at the precipice of an enormous crossroads.

16. A real G, G class

17. I said my piece, Chrissy.

18. Was he still doing coke when he passed away or had he quit but the damage was already done

19. There he goes, Mr. Type-A personality

20. “We *are here to talk* about you *killing yourself with drugs! not my fucking personality!!*”

21. I want to watch this doc. Guess I should do it soon before each part gets chopped up as “news.”

22. Wonder if this was before or after they wrote Chrissy’s intervention.

23. How lazy are journalists getting that they write a synopsis of 5 minutes of a documentary fucking pathetic

24. And now he’s dead. 😖

25. How am i just now finding out he ODed?  All the entertainment shows made it sound like a medical issue.

26. JG also accused the writers of being vultures for using the experience of his intervention to write in the scene with Chrissy’s intervention I believe.

27. It’s too bad he didn’t listen…from all accounts he was a lovely man… but not dealing with your addictions and dying at 51 is horrible.

28. He was such a talented actor, I wish we had more time with him 😔