From the Archives: Edie Falco

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

In this archival episode of Here's The Thing, Alec Baldwin interviews actress Edie Falco about her journey through television history. The c

Key takeaways

Edie Falco describes the set of The Sopranos as a 'fun and pleasant' environment due to the lighthearted writing and camaraderie.
Falco reveals she underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation for cancer during her time on The Sopranos without informing most of the cast.
She credits her successful audition process to a relaxed mindset where she enters auditions not caring if she gets the part.
The actress discusses how her mother's career as an actress and DJ influenced her view of professional work.
Falco emphasizes that her greatest professional achievement is fostering a respectful and manageable atmosphere on set.

Main topics

The Sopranos production
Personal health battles
Acting auditions and mindset

Notable quotes

There's no better place to be in when you walk into an audition than knowing you're not going to get it and not caring.

Conclusion

The episode provides an intimate look at the resilience required to su

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) This Speaker 7 (0:00) is an iHeart Podcast. Speaker 8 (0:02) Guaranteed human. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Speaker 6 (0:16) Ooh, I scammed him. What? I could talk to you for an hour. Speaker 8 (0:19) You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:34) Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Iwano. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGiulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of New Shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (1:06) Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman, Angela Geritana, Jeremy Speaker 2 (1:08) Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and Speaker 1 (1:10) we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists podcast, the Speaker 2 (1:14) improvised character comedy podcast, where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. Speaker 1 (1:22) And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. Speaker 7 (1:28) He gets right up next to the microphone. Speaker 1 (1:30) I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. Speaker 7 (1:33) You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Speaker 1 (1:38) Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (1:46) In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Dear honeys, this is goodbye. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (2:18) Hey, everybody, it's me, W. Kamau Bell. This season on my podcast, Who's With Me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Speaker 1 (2:28) Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Speaker 5 (2:39) Listen to Who's With Me with W. Kamau Bell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (2:47) Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, Black literature? I'm Jacquees Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit Podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella Bakers, Malcolm Xs, and Martin Luther Kings running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (3:20) Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, Lots to Say, with me, Bobby Bones, and Matt Castle. You're in training camp, and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to Lots to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (3:51) This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers. To hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions changed their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Speaker 3 (4:08) You know what I don't understand, Tony? What does she have that I don't have? Speaker 4 (4:16) Edie Falco played Carmela Soprano on the groundbreaking HBO show about an Italian-American mob family from New Jersey. The late, great James Gandolfini played her husband, Tony. It wasn't Edie's big break before The Sopranos' Edie worked with Tom Fontana on the HBO series Oz. But it's safe to say the role of Carmela made her career. TV Guide named The Sopranos the best television show in history. I Speaker 3 (4:45) didn't... have any sense of the gravity of what we were doing. And it might have just been because I was dumb. I didn't realize what, you know, the larger themes at play there. But I just enjoyed it. And it was still a novelty to be working on something that was good, that people enjoyed, that seemed to be well-received. Yeah, that was the excitement of being on something good was still very new. And Speaker 4 (5:07) I wonder when you did the show. Was it fun and pleasant? Was it really tough? Was it work? Speaker 3 (5:12) No, it was fun and pleasant because there was a lighthearted atmosphere. The writing was funny. There was a lot of really funny stuff. And it was a lot of these sort of goomba guys who were just— Yeah, Speaker 4 (5:20) cutting Speaker 3 (5:20) up. Felt like family to me and very easy to be with. Did Speaker 4 (5:25) you participate in the writing of the—did you just turn that all over? You never got involved in that? Speaker 3 (5:29) Not at all. I was not at all interested. I had so much trust in, certainly, David Chase, but in all the staff that he had. carefully chosen, handpicked. I felt like they knew what they were doing. They had a much better overview of what the story was about as opposed to, what would Carmela do in here? You know, I just thought it was a huge relief to know that I could just let them do their thing and I would do what I was hired to do. I felt completely comfortable with that. Speaker 4 (5:54) Did they put things about you in the characters? I mean, Tina Fey, when I did 30 Rock, was someone who, the moment you told a story, it was an embarrassing anecdote. It was in the show. Speaker 3 (6:03) Absolutely. Jim said that all the time. He's like, I can't talk to anybody about anything. It's going to be in the next episode. But I didn't notice it so much for my life. There was nothing going on in my life that was all that interesting. So I didn't see a lot of it in the scripts. But I know they, like I guess every show, to some extent, they start writing for the actors that have been hired. Speaker 3 (6:22) Aida's character, Aida Titora, who played his sister, was supposed to be a very different thing. It was supposed to be more like the mom, sort of cold and calculating and unkind. And because Aida Titora was doing it, it sort of morphed into this whole other like parvati, that phase that she went through where she was sort of like an earth child. So, yeah, I'm sure they were writing based on what they perceived me to be, but I was not entirely cognizant of that at the time. Speaker 4 (6:48) Why do you Speaker 3 (6:48) think Speaker 4 (6:48) they hired you for that part? Because you said... I read an interview where you talked about how you went and you just relaxed and said, hey, if this happens, it happens. Right. Which we all go through. Sure. Speaker 3 (6:58) We Speaker 4 (6:58) sometimes sit there and go, I can't stress about another interview. That's right. What do you think they hired you for? Speaker 3 (7:04) I couldn't begin to tell you. I think probably because of that, because I was completely non-stressed. It was a script that had been bouncing around for a while, but I was doing Oz at the time, and I was working a lot, and I kind of was all caught up in that. And it came along, and it was called Sopranos, and I thought it's about singers or something. And it's an Italian-American woman, wife, and I thought I'd never get cast as that. I know who's going to get cast. I figured it's Annabella Shore. or Marissa Tomei or some of these women who had played parts that sort of felt similar to that. There's no better place to be in when you walk into an audition than knowing you're not going to get it and not caring. So, you know, I really just sort of enjoyed myself and thought it's just another audition. And if you're in a good head, you can never not learn something from an audition. So I just went in and had fun. And you inadvertently you present your best self when you're doing that. And I guess, I don't know, I was relaxed and I enjoyed myself. So I guess that's what they. Saw. I Speaker 4 (8:03) don't Speaker 3 (8:04) know. Speaker 4 (8:04) And when you got the job, was that something that just floored you? Were you ecstatic about getting the job? Speaker 3 (8:09) Well, remember, it's just a pilot you get cast for, you know? So at that point, it was whatever it was, two weeks of work, and it was a sum of money I had never seen before, which now seems not all that shocking. But back in the day, it meant I could pay off my student loan. And so I was able to, with that one check. completely pay off my student loan. It was huge. It was a huge occurrence. But again, two weeks of work and then on to the next panic thing, you know, about what to do next. And how Speaker 4 (8:36) soon after the pilot was shot? I Speaker 3 (8:38) think it was a year. Were you Speaker 4 (8:39) told? So you waited a year to be told this was going to move forward. Speaker 3 (8:43) And David Chase called me and said, I just want to let you know this has been picked up. This is after we shot the pilot. And he said, well, nobody's going to watch this thing, but I'm proud of what we made or whatever. And David was also apparently he put his head in his hand and said, oh, no, when he found out it was picked up because I don't think he had intended to have to tell more about these people. I think he was trying to get a movie made. And this was almost like a spec script or something. This is Speaker 1 (9:07) a demo Speaker 3 (9:07) reel. I don't think he had anticipated this going on like this. So he had his head in his hands. Jimmy's like, what am I doing? And I'm like, I can pay my student loan. And, you know, here it is 4,000 years later and just goes to show you. You wake up every day, you have no idea what anything's going to turn into. Speaker 4 (9:25) We're taking a break. Stay with us. Speaker 6 (9:33) This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists, and building business. And alongside my brother Tank, the superstar R &B singer, songwriter, and producer, we've created something special, the R &B Money Podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives, and fans of R &B music come to reminisce, pull back the curtain, and tell the stories that shape this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was... Hood famous. Yeah. And Speaker 7 (10:01) then Real Love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. Speaker 6 (10:05) And they're seeing all the success. They're Speaker 7 (10:07) hearing the music Speaker 6 (10:07) and Speaker 7 (10:08) we had nothing. Speaker 6 (10:09) We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, legends, current stars, and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R &B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then knock Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on, man. I was like, hold on. I'm not going to MJ out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R &B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R &B Money Podcast. Listen to R &B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (10:46) I'm Mimi Brown, and every day on Front Page Podcast, I help you make sense of the stories shaping our world. Each day, I break down the biggest headlines, provide important context, and explain how these stories could impact your life, your family, and your community. My goal is to deliver clear, trustworthy information in a format that fits your schedule. And when a story deserves a deeper conversation, I'll sit down with experts, newsmakers, and thought leaders to help you better understand the headlines. I spoke with Gary Mayer, Eddie Melton about what's happening on the ground, whether race is playing a role and what help is available for families who simply can't afford the added cost. Joining us now is Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson. Thank Speaker 6 (11:30) you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Speaker 8 (11:31) Absolutely. Whether it's a major national story or an issue impacting your community, join me on Front Page. Listen to Front Page from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (11:48) Hey, everybody. It's me, W. Kamau Bell. This season of my podcast, who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Everything up to that point, Bill Jew is a comic. Us going on the road, doing Battle Mountain and Ely and Speaker 1 (12:03) all this shit. Speaker 5 (12:03) Yeah, you took me. You were one of the first people who took me on the road, which is funny because at the time I was like, I don't know if I like this guy. With rapper, actor, Daveed Diggs. The jump off for me was Hamilton, and it was the most popular thing. In a very long time. But it was still, for me, it was me and my friends making something dumb. Bruce Lee's daughter and Brandon Lee's sister, Shannon Lee. Speaker 1 (12:27) Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Speaker 5 (12:38) Listen to Who's With Me with Debbie Quambelle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (12:46) The World Cup is over, but if you caught the soccer bug and aren't sure what to do now, check out our podcast, Big Kick Energy. I'm Cameron Dicker, the kicker from the Los Angeles Chargers, most accurate kicker in NFL history, but I was raised on the soccer pitches of Shanghai. And I'm here with Timmy Tillman, LAFC star, grew up in the academies of Germany and now under the bright lights of Major League Soccer. So, we know a little something about kicking balls. Maybe you're new to the game, or you're ready to take your passion to the next level. Each week we'll tackle things like who's winning the Premier League this year. Playing like a number 10. Do you know what that means? Then we go over to France. Ligue Speaker 6 (13:22) 1. Speaker 5 (13:22) Ligue 1. Ligue 1. Oh, damn. He knows more. He's better than me. What do you think is harder? Scoring a penalty kick or scoring a field goal? He's in the NFL and I'm like, just a big factor. I do enough. That's crazy. Join us each week for a quick chat with your soccer-loving bros about the best sport in the world. Soccer. Just don't tell my coaches I said that. Listen to Big Kick Energy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 7 (13:47) Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Poynter, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A Speaker 1 (14:06) hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life. But even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? Speaker 7 (14:26) There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Poynter on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. Speaker 2 (14:48) Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, Lots to Say, with me, Bobby Bones, and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends, they're mostly Matt's friends, who are current or former NFL players, some of the biggest names in music and entertainment, and then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great Pac-Man Jones. Speaker 6 (15:08) After the game, the whole national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Speaker 5 (15:13) Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you at him? Come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called Situational Awareness, where Bobby and I give each other real-life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. Speaker 2 (15:25) You're in training camp, and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to