'Sopranos' actor Dan Grimaldi gives his take on Tony Soprano's fate [SPOILERS]:

Originally posted with the Behind The Scenes Network.

The ‘Sopranos’ actor who played Patsy Parisi gives an idea of what could have happened in the series' final scene

This summer, we will have reached 15 whole years since The Sopranos cut to black in its iconic and controversial series finale.

Over the years, it has been widely debated amongst fans and even the series' cast and crew, just what happened to Tony Soprano at Holsten's Diner in the final scene of HBO's groundbreaking series. Was Tony killed? Did the cut to black whack the audience instead? Does it even matter?

In a conversation with Sool Radio; Dan Grimaldi—who portrayed Patsy Parisi (as well as his twin brother Philly in Season 2), a character that became a key player especially in The Sopranos' final set of episodes—gave his take on Tony Soprano's potential fate.

In the series, Patsy had unfinished business with Tony Soprano. Seemingly aware that Tony was behind the murder of Patsy's twin brother, Patsy was forced to move on for the sake of his own life and development. The wounds never fully healed, though. Dan Grimaldi, the actor who played Patsy himself was asked upfront if he thought his character could have turned against Tony Soprano.

"Absolutely", replied Grimaldi without missing a beat. "Tony killed [Patsy's] twin brother, but that's not something he ever forgot; nor did he ever give up revenge."

Grimaldi then recalled a pivotal scene from the series' Season 3 premiere, in which Patsy was strong-armed by Tony into letting the entire situation go.

"That's my favorite scene as Patsy", Grimaldi revealed. "I think the raw emotion that underlies that scene, and how quietly we both played it, both [James Gandolfini] and myself, and how he hammered me over and over, and how I finally... Not that I gave in; but I saw that if I wanted a future, giving up the grief is what I had to do. I love that scene and what we both did with it. It's my favorite scene."

On "Rude" Jude Angelini, His New Book 'Fin', Rehab & Hip Hop's Undeniable Presence

Originally posted to the Behind The Scenes Network.

In a conversation with Sool Radio, Jude Angelini reflects on his new book, timelessness in art and a life-altering health decision.

I'll preface this opening by saying that I promise not to regularly work my own history into each profile piece I write; but author, radio host and TV personality Jude Angelini has enough to do with my history—including being a reason by proxy why I'm a part of the network you're reading this on—where it would be disingenuous if I didn't.

In my coming of age, I regularly gravitated toward artists that could be written off at first glance as crass and without much to say, but would profoundly subvert those expectations with their depth, nuance and range of emotion as soon as you dig deeper.

Eminem was the prime example of this growing up. You had to dig deeper than "My Name Is" and "The Real Slim Shady" to get to "Rock Bottom" and "Say Goodbye Hollywood". Apart from that; being a nerdy white kid in 1999 and 2000, getting bullied regularly by peers and being told there was something wrong with me by instructors almost guaranteed that I would find Em's music relatable. I felt a little less alone, a little less scared.

That relatability in Hip Hop opened the door for me to other artists that were masters in subverting those surface-level expectations (2pac, Bizzy Bone and Left Eye embodied these for 14 year-old me); artists that honed their craft at expert level, but at the same time were self-effacing and unpretentious. You'd almost wonder if these artists were even aware of their own impact, or if bouts of self-loathing and indecision got in the way.

It's telling that I learned of Jude Angelini from his hosting of The All Out Show, the afternoon drive-time show on SiriusXM's Shade45—the Hip Hop station owned by Eminem. I admired Jude's, again, nuance and range of emotion; the ability to seamlessly ping-pong between dick jokes and well articulated insight about serious subjects like classism and racial hypocrisy—like Howard Stern before him, but with more of a focus on the Hip Hop crowd Shade45 catered to. It was a perfect storm.

When Jude self-published his first book, Hyena, in 2014, it was out of necessity from fear of losing his long-time radio job, following a now-legendary on-air argument with Floyd Mayweather. This became a viral moment, but Jude caught heat from upper-management, as Mayweather was then close with Shade45 partner and rapper 50 Cent. At this point, Jude began forming other sources of revenue, which culminated in Hyena.

Meanwhile, I was in the midst of launching a blog of transcribed interviews and music essays. I reached out to Jude on Twitter for an interview and he obliged. Having no interviewing or journalistic experience by this point, that interview was loaded with generic softball questions, as well as hyper-specific questions about certain All Out Show episodes without providing any context to non-listeners.

Over the years, I was fortunate enough to be in touch with Jude from time to time; appearing on Sool Radio in 2017 upon the release of his second book, Hummingbird, and even letting me photograph his Chicago reading event that same year. I even got to know All Out Show staples such as Andrea Grano, John Z Matthews and BTSN's own Justin Hunte.

Jude recently released his third book, Fin. This, like the previous two, is a collection of autobiographical vignettes; short stories that are sequenced to connect in theme, if not chronologically. This book is said to be the completion of a trilogy. The writing style has been compared time and time again to Bukowski and Hunter S Thompson, in the sense that his writing benefits from being deliberately unpolished and emotionally straightforward.

Jude stopped by Sool Radio following the release of Fin and touched on this method. "I always say anybody, any idiot can make something simple sound complicated," he noted. "But it's taking something that's deep and profound and making it simple with as little words as possible. That's a gift. So that's what I shoot for."

"I want my writing to be timeless", Jude added. "That's that's what I want it to be. [With] a lot of books and shit; you're like, 'oh, that's so 1992." So that's why I talk about things that are timeless, loneliness, rejection, sadness, crazy sex.

Jude furthermore touched on his pending entrance into a rehab facility for dependence on sleep medication, and what that means as a public figure.

"The ironic part was... It was like, I've been doing all these drugs; been raging and being fine," said Jude, referring to his past frequent and public use of GHB, Ketamine and other drugs that seemingly fueled much of Jude's persona for years. "It was a combination of a lot of personal shit; family, death, even the COVID shit. [It] really put a stress on me that I didn't know how to deal with; and that caused insomnia, and I turned to Benzos to try to help. So it does kind of try to help, but every day I'm going through withdrawals by 8:00 at night; just like shaking and quivering and stuff like that. So I'd like to erase that and kind of try to start from [scratch]. I don't even know what my baseline is."

With Fin being the third book in Jude's autobiographical trilogy, the natural question would be "what's next as an author?" As of right now, his guess is as good as anyone's.

"I'm not sure. I'm not good at making shit up," Jude put it when asked. "I'm good at telling the truth. So it may be more essays, but I haven't thought about that yet. Right now, Fin's out, so for me to be thinking about the next book is, well... It'd be discrediting Fin."

Jude is approaching 20 years on the All Out Show; and 20 years of working for Eminem, who recently played a prominent role in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, arguably the most coveted stage in modern American television, alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and others.

"I thought that was awesome," reflected Jude. "I think it's official that Hip Hop is now mainstream. It's crazy for me; growing up where Hip Hop was totally underground, only played at night on certain stations. And now I go to like a baseball game and they're playing fucking trap music during batting practice, and now on the Super Bowl. These guys are actually legacy."

You can check out Jude's full 2022 interview with Sool Radio here.