It’s been 15 years since suddenly and infamously cut to black, but fans are still investigating and uncovering the show’s various little details.
The series followed late actor as main character Tony Soprano while he juggled his job as a mob boss alongside being a husband and father.
Over the years, many of the debates and theories about the series have focused on its , which abruptly stopped in mid-sentence.
But one fan of the show discovered something this week that concerned the show’s very first episode: James Gandolfini’s age when the pilot was filmed.
Gandolfini, who died in 2013 at the age of just 51, was 37 when he started working with David Chase on the HBO series.
And this revelation – which isn’t exactly new information, but still shocked the Twitter user who brought it up – has got people talking.
‘Today I learned that James Gandolfini was only 37 during the first season of The Sopranos’, they said, with their words accompanied by a picture of Gandolfini in action during the series’ tenth episode A Hit Is a Hit.
The user then remarked that actors Jonah Hill, Andrew Garfield, and Donald Glover are all currently older than Gandolfini was when he filmed the episode.
The post intended to highlight that Gandolfini looked much older than his actual age, but many other fans of the show (and of Gandolfini himself) were quick to jump to his defence – and rightly so.
‘He is hotter than all of them’, one user responded, while joking: ‘People smoked inside and didn’t use baby blood as under eye cream! They were still hot!’
Other fans took the opportunity to imagine what Gandolfini would look like now, were he still around to appear in other TV shows and films.
‘I like to think he’d have been one of those guys who did all their ageing when they’re young and didn’t afterwards and that he would’ve looked roughly the same thirty years on’.
The user who posted the original picture qualified their statement by saying: ‘For the record, James Gandolfini was the GOAT and I miss his screen presence dearly. Was just shocked when I learned the age’.
One theory is that Gandolfini looked older than 37 while portraying Tony simply because Tony Soprano was older. He was 40, in fact.
In addition, both of Tony’s children were already teenagers when the show started. Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) was 17, while A. J. (Robert Iler) was 14.
The Sopranos is available to stream on NOW.
