After Landing ‘The Many Saints of Newark,' Michael Gandolfini Watched ‘The Sopranos' for the First Time
Michael Gandolfini, 25, is an actor best known for his role as the young Tony Soprano in the 2021 film 'The Many Saints of Newark,' a prequel to 'The Sopranos' series. He co-stars in the new film 'Warfare.' He spoke with Marc Myers.
I wasn't into sports when I was really young. Lots of kids I knew played football or soccer. I just wanted to create imaginative worlds, act out stories I made up with friends and tape them using my camcorder. Pretending was what calmed me.
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How ‘Survival of the Thickest,' ‘Mo' and ‘Shrinking' Are Helping Destigmatize Therapy for Men of Color
When The Sopranos debuted in 1999, the series moved the cultural needle in innumerable ways — not least with its depiction of a hypermasculine man in a therapist's office. Over six seasons, the series featured eponymous mobster Tony Soprano's regular visits with Dr. Jennifer Melfi — a subplot so socially impactful that actress Lorraine Bracco was once honored by the American Psychoanalytical Association. More from The Hollywood Reporter The Hollywood Reporter Sets Tonys Preshow Colman Domingo, Paul Tazewell, Sean Bankhead to be Honored at Native Son Awards Hollywood Flashback: Noah Wyle Nabbed 5 Emmy Noms the First Time He Played a Doctor on TV In the decades since the HBO series challenged white men's historical aversion to the therapist's couch, men of color have remained largely absent from that needle-shift. Shows like Atlanta and This Is Us are among the few hits in the past quarter century in which a man of color visited a therapist. But at least three series this season — Netflix's Survival of the Thickest and Mo, and Apple TV+'s Shrinking — have devoted significant time to unpacking men of color's complicated history with psychotherapy. This collection of disarming portrayals depicts realities and dispels stereotypes, and potentially even shifts real-world behaviors. 'A thing that all of us [writers] were most attracted to is how do you take care of your mental health when you don't even know that you have to,' says Survival of the Thickest star and co-creator Michelle Buteau, whose Black male lead Khalil (Tone Bell) starts to consider therapy, then takes the plunge after learning on the basketball court that many of his Black male friends already go. 'I was also really inspired by — we talked about this in the room a little bit — when Will Smith and Chris Rock had that moment at the Oscars. I was just like, 'These two very successful Black men that have access to all the resources still somehow, from what I saw, haven't worked through it yet.' ' Mo creator and star Mo Amer's experience with a brother who has multiple disabilities (along with show consultant Dani Rodwell, a clinical social worker with autism who specializes in neurodevelopmental disabilities) shaped the depiction of Sameer (Omar Elba), Mo's older brother who receives an autism diagnosis. In season two, Sameer's sister Nadia (Cherien Dabis) sets up an appointment with a therapist after years of their mother's reluctance. 'In real life, I did that with my brother, and he was very responsive to it,' Amer, who notes his family has always been more open about these discussions, says. 'A lot [of people] within our [Palestinian American Muslim] community deny what's actually going on and don't deal with it head-on; they just self-diagnose, in a way. But it's important to own [in the show] if we are helping [Sameer] or hurting him. That's something I needed to acknowledge: Move forward as a family with love, care and understanding.' Meanwhile, in the latest season of Shrinking, Sean (Luke Tennie), a veteran with PTSD, continues treatment despite an emotional blowup with his estranged father, who downplays the impacts of his therapy. Tennie credits writer Bill Posley, who worked in his perspective as a Black veteran. 'We see [Sean] get excited, or even begin to lean on his therapy as a way to give him more choices than the ones he had before. We start to see somebody who's using a tool for himself instead of just being reprimanded by it,' says the actor. Tennie also notes that the initial paternal rejection offered its own opportunity for real-world mirroring. 'A lot of these Black dads are not going to say sorry,' says the actor. 'But what we've provided is a catharsis and a hope that could convince other people that they could be the father who gives this to their child.' These portrayals enter a world in which men of color have had a far more wary attitude toward therapy than white men. Between 2010 and 2013, white men with daily feelings of anxiety and depression were up to two times as likely to talk to a medical professional than Black and Hispanic men, according to the CDC. 'The historical relationship between men of color — particularly Black men — and therapy has been shaped by systemic inequities, cultural stigmas and a legacy of mistrust toward mental health institutions,' says Dr. Nashira Funn Kayode, a longtime clinical social worker and mental health expert in the areas of trauma, PTSD and criminal justice-involved individuals. '[This has] led to Black men being less likely to seek treatment and more likely to receive inadequate care when they do.' But more positive depictions of men of color in therapy are cropping up now, say experts, due to the streaming age's influx of writers of color as well as evolving attitudes within society itself. 'There's a cadre of people coming out of the 1990s and 2000s era, which is when you're starting to see more boys — especially boys of color — having disciplinary problems in school, learning disabilities,' says Stephanie Troutman Robbins, head of the Gender & Women's Studies department at the University of Arizona. That fact, she says, meant many more adults today were as children brought 'into contact with the guidance counselor, with a psychoanalyst.' The TV trend could further accelerate these shifts. Research published in 2016 by the American Psychological Association found that portrayals of therapy decreased stigma around mental health. And Bracco has said that more men started going to therapy because of Tony Soprano. Experts are hoping for the same effect from these new depictions. 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Sarah Jessica Parker Responds to Backlash Over Che Diaz: 'I Was Shocked' By Hate Toward ‘And Just Like That' Character
Che Diaz has officially left the chat — and not everyone is sad about it. As And Just Like That Season 3 kicks off on HBO Max, longtime Sex and the City fans have noticed one major absence: Sara Ramirez's Che Diaz, the non-binary stand-up comic who had a high-profile romance with Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) in the show's first two seasons. Che was one of the reboot's most divisive characters, sparking thinkpieces, memes, and heated debates. Critics often slammed the character as a clunky attempt at queerness, calling Che a 'caricature' and a symbol of the show's occasionally awkward efforts to modernize. Now, series star and executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker is addressing the controversy for the first time — and she admits the backlash caught her completely off guard. 'A friend of mine brought it up to me, and it's like: 'What are you talking about?' And he said: 'Yeah, there's all this conversation,'' Parker told The Guardian in a new interview. 'I've been an actor for 50 years, and I've almost never paid attention to peripheral chatter. I loved working with them.' Parker also reflected on her own character Carrie Bradshaw and the way audiences have responded to her over the years — especially in comparison to beloved TV 'bad boys' like Tony Soprano. 'I prefer that to any other description of her, because it allows her to be as male as the men have been. I love The Sopranos so much, and I look at all the times [Tony] was unlawful, and we loved him. Carrie has an affair and everybody falls apart,' she said. 'An antihero, to me, is somebody that's not behaving in conventional ways, and she hasn't ever… A lot of people love her too, though!' Sex and the City ran for six seasons from 1998 to 2004 and spawned two feature films. And Just Like That premiered in 2021 and is currently streaming its third season on HBO Max.
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Alex Garland's ‘Warfare' Generated Tons of Controversy. Here's Why You Should See It Anyway
Warfare, the new film from co-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, appears to be one of the most realistic and grueling combat films ever made. It's one of this year's best films, but it's doubtful you'll be able to stomach it more than once (if that). It would be trite for anyone who's not seen combat to say that Warfare is a realistic depiction of battle, but it vibrates with the nauseating feeling of authenticity. The film has generated a fair amount of controversy, with some identifying it as jingoist propaganda, but that could not be further from the truth. Garland is the prolific screenwriter behind 28 Days Later (and the upcoming 28 Years Later), and the director of Ex Machina (2015) and Annihilation (2018). His previous film, 2024's Civil War, was one of the best American films of last year. It was a gritty but simultaneously poetic piece of speculative fiction concerning a Stateside civil war, the roots and details of which remained delightfully unexplained. The point was not what brought us there, but how we extricate ourselves from it. Civil War diluted its queasier elements with a thrumming soundtrack, a warm central relationship between characters played by Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny, and a satisfying-if-brutal climax in which insurgents storm the White House and, well, you can guess the rest. Warfare contains none of those audience concessions. It's grisly, unpleasant, genuinely horrifying filmmaking which is emphatically not a piece of propaganda nor entertainment but rather a gigantic question mark over the idea of combat itself. It's a spectacular piece of cinema, one of the most visceral and immersive movies you're likely to see; but it's extremely unpleasant to wrote and directed the picture with Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL, on whose experience the film is based. Mendoza worked as a military adviser on Civil War, and his influence is felt in that film's authentic milieu (particularly that final Oval Office skirmish). Warfare, which takes place mostly in real-time, chronicles a mission undertaken by Mendoza's platoon in November 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, which went terribly wrong. We watch as the group — led by Will Poulter's Eric and including D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza and Cosmo Jarvis as his best friend, Elliot — takes over a residential home, knocking down a wall that separates their apartment from another family and confining the civilians to the basement. Elliot and another sniper, Frank (Taylor John Smith), take positions monitoring a building across the street. Slowly, activity starts building around the apartment block. Parents begin clearing their children off the street. An unseen assailant tosses a grenade into the apartment, and chaos ensues. From that point on, the film is a dire combat diary about the platoon's struggle to simply stay alive. Mendoza and Garland undertook what the former described as a 'detective-like approach' to unravel the different fragments of recollection from those involved. 'This film uses only their memories,' an opening title card tells us of Mendoza and his comrades. A statement at the very end of the film's credits goes further: 'This film is based on interviews with people involved, and a handful of photographs,' it explains. 'The film attempts to reconstruct the incident with as much accuracy as memory allows.' Warfare has provoked ire and controversy in certain circles over what some deem to be a thread of jingoistic patriotism running through the film. One wonders if those people have seen Garland and Mendoza's movie or simply judged the trailer. Much like Civil War, Warfare de-contextualizes the conflict and plainly presents, in Garland's words, 'an incident of warfare.' Just one, like many before and after. There is no politicizing, no monologues explaining the plot, or even errant dialogue hinting at the cause the main characters are striving towards. Warfare presents its characters and situations at face value, allowing the audience to put their own interpretation on events. There is no traditional film score, no musical stings, no reprieve from the sensory assault. As such, it's gratingly, brilliantly claustrophobic. As it focuses on a group of American military personnel and largely keeps off-screen the faceless 'jihadists' who are attacking them, one could draw inferences that the film is pro-American military, but to actually believe that would be to willfully ignore the message of the film, not to mention the craft behind it. It's simply a memory piece of those involved, and one senses that Garland and Mendoza would make an equally humane film about the other side of the conflict were they provided with that perspective. A brief coda, focusing on the Iraqi family in whose home most of the action unfolds, expresses unequivocally with whom the directors sympathize. Likewise, the film's final shot is a gut-punch of desperation. What was it all for?There is no heroic derring-do on display here, no moments where any of the ensemble have an opportunity to distinguish themselves with a bit of cool action. Warfare removes the inherent cinema behind violence, presenting it as it is: confusing, scary, and unceasing. There's not a single frame of this movie which is framed in an exciting or titillating manner. It seems impossible, and frankly a bit nauseating, to imagine that anyone would watch Warfare and be entertained by it, or think that there is anything glamorous about what's depicted. It's the harshest possible rebuke to the sexy, Miller-time combat depicted in Hollywood productions like Top Gun: Maverick, which functioned nominally as a hyped-up recruitment video. Warfare demands to be shown as the second half of a double bill with that film, so opposed and convincing is its stance. Warfare is certainly one of the most emphatically anti-war films ever made. It's a properly grueling experience which is commendable for the ringer through which it puts its audience, and for the sheer skill behind its filmmaking. It's highly unlikely you'll want to watch Warfare more than once (whether you want to stomach it at all is worth interrogating), but it's a film of remarkable integrity which unfailingly maintains the strength of its conviction. It offers viewers, from the comfort of their couches, a glimpse of a world they would be lucky never to see.
