David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, has talked about Tony Sopranos’ fate again, or at least the comment attributed to him last week that sent the Internet into a tizzy. Chase explained that the Vox story that quoted him as saying that the fictional Tony is still alive was the result of getting too friendly with a journalist.
Chase spoke with The Daily Beast and said that he got too friendly with Vox writer Martha P. Nicholmson. She claimed that an agitated Chase just blurted out that Tony lived on after the end of the series. Vox made a big deal about this “scoop,” using the quote as the centerpiece for its presentation of the interview.
But later, his rep said that Chase was taken out of context. “As David Chase has said numerous times on the record, ‘Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point,’” the statement read. “To continue to search for this answer is fruitless. The final scene of The Sopranos raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer.”
“This has taught me, for good and all, not to befriend any journalist. I got too friendly with her,” Chase told the Daily Beast about the situation. “And I kept saying to her, ‘You know, this can’t be good that you and I talk to each other and have lunch and coffee. Something’s wrong here,’ and she’d say, ‘No, no, no.’ And she meant that—she wasn’t setting me up. It seems like, poor Dave, there’s no way he can win.”
He further explained, “I don’t recall that conversation. I’m sure it happened, but I don’t recall it, and if I did say that, I believe I was probably thinking about something else. What do you want to know about it?”
Chase covered several other topics in the interview, also revealing that he only had the one ending in mind for The Sopranos. He also said that he is still developing a miniseries for HBO called A Ribbon of Dreams, which would be about the early days of Hollywood.
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