The role Steve Buscemi was “shocked” to lose
No stranger to dying on-screen, Steve Buscemi has been killed off more than 20 times across film and television, but not even that prepared him for losing a plum role much quicker than he’d expected.
Having been fatally shot in The Grey Zone, The Last Outlaw, Reservoir Dogs, and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, to name just a few, Buscemi had additionally been stabbed and set alight in The Dinnertime Killer, scalped in Lonesome Dove, impaled by multiple knives in Desperado, and had an ice pick lodged into his back in Domestic Disturbance.
He also fell from a great height in Michael Bay’s The Island and cratered through a glass tabletop upon impact, but in true Buscemi fashion, he had been shot before that happened. The point is, a character he plays meeting their doom is hardly out of the ordinary, although the actor would have preferred to stick around on The Sopranos for a little longer.
Appearing in the first episode of season five as Tony Blundetto, Buscemi would lend his talents to the remainder of the fifth run before taking a shotgun blast to the face in the finale. Unfortunately for him, as he revealed on the Talking Sopranos podcast: “I thought I would do two seasons”.
Outlining his arc ending before he believed it should, Buscemi admitted he was “shocked and disappointed I only made it through one season”. Then again, he did think it was the best way to go, as he explained: “To be shot in the face by Tony Soprano! And he did it out of love, you know? He was saving me from a fate that was much worse.”
Creator David Chase had also been operating under the assumption that Blundetto would be sticking around for a residence a touch lengthier, but a fateful lunch between the two saw the showrunner come clean and say he’d written both himself and Tony B into a corner that neither would be able to escape from.
Lulling himself into a false sense of security, Buscemi hoped that “maybe he has a great story idea for the next season,” although he left in a state of denial “because I couldn’t accept it”. One to always look for the positive side of any situation, the regular Adam Sandler collaborator took solace in the fact that “we still had a good lunch”.
He did technically make a return to The Sopranos following his 12-gauge dismissal, albeit from behind the camera. Buscemi would direct ‘Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request…’ during the final season, a full circle moment of sorts considering he’d debuted on the show by helming season three chapter ‘Pine Barrens’, long before he was welcomed into the ensemble as one of its most memorable short-lived supporting characters.