The Sopranos Stars Claim HBO Paid James Gandolfini $3 Million Not to Star in The Office
The Sopranos star was reportedly paid $3 million to turn down a role in The Office, which was offered to him after Steve Carell left the production.
The Office and The Sopranos are iconic TV series from the early 21st century. Both productions made history and are still quite popular today. And as it turns out, they may have had more in common than just huge success, as there was a chance that both productions would have featured the same actor in leading roles.
We're talking about James Gandolfini, who was offered a role in The Office after Steve Carell, who played the unforgettable Michael Scott, left the cast. The creators spent a long time looking for a suitable successor to fill the gap left by the TV series' star, but they faced several setbacks. So they finally decided to contact the actor who had previously led The Sopranos.
In the 2021 Talking Sopranos podcast, Gandolfini's set mates Michael Imperioli and Steve Schrippa, during an interview with Ricky Gervais, discussed how NBC tried to replace Carell with Gandolfini. This was after The Sopranos star had already finished working on the TV show that brought him his greatest fame. He was then looking for a new project to match success of the HBO TV series.
I think before James Spader and after Carell, they offered Jim – I want to say $4 million – to play him for the season, and HBO paid him $3 million not to do it. That’s a fact. Jim was going to do it because he hadn’t worked and it was a number of years removed from when the show ended.
According to reports from The Sopranos actors, Gandolfini not only got an offer from NBC, which wanted him in The Office, but also from HBO, which wanted to keep him for itself. And the actor in 2006 signed a contract with HBO for new projects.
Those events were not only mentioned by Imperioli and Schrippa. They were also described in The Office (The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History) by Andy Green. From there we can learn that Gandolfini wasn't sure if he would fit in the comedy series.
I remember him being really, really complimentary, but he wasn’t super familiar with the show. He had watched a few episodes and was really unsure about comedy. He was like, “I don’t one hundred percent know how to play this”.
Ultimately, we didn't find out how Gandolfini would have worked out in The Office, as he dropped out of that project and focused on others he was working on in collaboration with HBO.
