Lorraine Bracco talks 30 years of 'Goodfellas' and that controversial 'Sopranos' scene
Lorraine Bracco played a major role in one of the most memorable gangster movies of all time (“GoodFellas”) and also in one of the most memorable gangster TV shows of all time (“The Sopranos”).
Bracco spoke to Yahoo Entertainment about the 30th anniversary of the Scorsese classic, reminiscing about the one-take Steadicam shot of her and Ray Liotta walking into the Copacabana. Bracco played Karen Hill to Liotta’s rising mobster Henry Hill.
“We rehearsed it a lot,” she said. “We filmed it like 15 or 18 times. And at each take, something different came up which was a lot of fun.”
She also weighed in a controversial scene from “The Sopranos” where her character, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, is raped. In a subsequent scene, Melfi considers telling Tony Soprano, her patient, but opts not to, knowing he might exact violent revenge on her behalf.
“It was a question of ethics for her not to tell them the truth,” Bracco said. She added that she agreed with her character’s decision, although not everyone did.
“My mother and father [were] screaming, ‘Tell him, tell him,’” she said.
Video Transcript
LORRAINE BRACCO: I know there are women like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I gotta admit the truth. It turned me on.
ETHAN ALTER: This year is the 30th anniversary of Goodfellas, obviously. We just celebrated that anniversary. And when I think of awe-inspiring, I always think of that famous steadicam shot to the copacabana. What do you remember about shooting that scene in particular? It's such a beautiful choreographed moment.
LORRAINE BRACCO: We rehearsed it a lot. We filmed it a lot. If I'm not mistaken, we filmed it like 15 or 18 times. And at each take something different came up, which was a lot of fun. Thank God for Ray Liotta. He teased the people kissing and how we picked the food off of the trays. I don't think that was in the script. So there was a lot of fun things that happened.
ETHAN ALTER: One other sequence that's sort of key to the movie is where you tell Ray Liotta Henry that you were harassed by a neighbor, and then he goes and beats that neighbor up. And that's sort of the moment where you realize who you're marrying. What's key about that sequence to you? What did-- how did you feel that sequence is important to the film?
LORRAINE BRACCO: I think the most important part of it for Karen Hill was, yes, she realized who he was, yes, he was the antithesis of her family. She was brought up Orthodox Jewish. She totally did not want to marry her father. And Henry was the opposite of that. He was dangerous and sexy and something that you know her father was not.
ETHAN ALTER: I have to imagine that David Chase was thinking of that scene when he wrote the storyline in The Sopranos about Jennifer Melfi getting raped and not telling Tony Soprano. That feels like a very direct twist on what happened with Karen and Henry Hill. I don't know if he ever mentioned that to you as an inspiration.
LORRAINE BRACCO: Well, Robin Green wrote that script. She apparently had a friend who was raped in a garage. And I guess she went to David at the time and said, this is what I would like to write in this episode. When they told me they were going to do this, I said, why are you going to hurt Melfi out of everybody to hurt? David said, because I know the ending and that's because she doesn't tell him.
- What's the matter?
LORRAINE BRACCO: He felt it was really a question of her ethics. If she told him she knew that he would go in and hurt him.
ETHAN ALTER: Did you agree with her decision? Do you think she made the right choice?
LORRAINE BRACCO: Yes I do. Even though my father would have liked me to have told him. I'm laughing because my mother and father was screaming, tell him, tell him.
- You want to say something?
- No.
LORRAINE BRACCO: Well, the crazy thing about the actor who played the rapist was a fireman. It was so emotional that he had to stop at one point and say, I save people for a living. I don't hurt people. And when I saw him literally put his head down and cry, I said to myself, oh I must be doing something right.
- You see over here, that's where your bedroom is going to be.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So your bedroom. Now your bathroom is going to be in that corner.
- OK.
- I don't know if you were curious how your roof actually was, you see those-- the bamboo? The bamboo was holding this clay tile. It's been like that for--
- A thousand years.
- Couple hundred years, for sure.
ETHAN ALTER: If there is one thing you could say about the biggest difference between the American and Italian real estate market, what would you say? What's the most shocking thing about the way things work in Italy versus here?
LORRAINE BRACCO: Everything is done by hand. There's no drywall. They plaster the walls three, four, five times. I kept going, when's the drywall coming in? That's a big difference. I don't know if we could really afford to build like that here anymore. I was in awe. The way they did the scaffolding, the way they worked to take off this thatched roof that was there. It was amazing. It really was.
