Michael Imperioli Confesses He Had to 'Go to Some Nasty Places' to Film Abusive 'Sopranos' Scenes

Michael Imperioli is well known for his role as Christopher Moltisanti in HBO’s hit drama The Sopranos.

Although Imperioli’s character — who was distantly related to Tony Soprano by marriage — regularly had scenes involving dark subjects such as drug use and cold-blooded murder, The White Lotus star admitted that the scenes that were the most grueling for him were the ones involving domestic abuse.

“The most brutal, difficult stuff for me is when Christopher had to be physically abusive with Adriana, for obvious reasons," Imperioli revealed to a news outlet, referring to Christopher's tumultuous relationship with another popular character played by Drea de Matteo.

Imperioli explained that actors have to be “really careful” in these types of scenes so that they don’t accidentally injure their acting partner, but beyond that, it’s also incredibly emotionally and mentally taxing to get to the dark places that it takes to sell that type of scene to the audience.

"Having to get to that point of violence toward a woman, you have to go to some nasty places to get there,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s very immediate. Sometimes, it’s something present in your life that you can tap into. Sometimes, you have to go someplace from the past. And sometimes, you have to go to someplace imaginary.”

"It’s much easier shooting a mobster or shooting heroin,” he admitted, referencing his character’s issues with substance abuse that were a common theme throughout many episodes of the show. “That stuff to me is not difficult. But that stuff with her was.”

The Goodfellas star shared that sometimes actors will use stunt doubles for scenes like that to assure everyone's safety, but other times they do the scenes themselves. However, learning the motions before the cameras are rolling and actually acting out those volatile scenes are entirely different beasts.

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“It’s one thing to choreograph and rehearse it, then when you act it full-tilt with all the emotion, it's easy to not have as much control as in the rehearsal,” he told the outlet. “So, you really have to be quite careful.”

Imperioli spoke with The Guardian about shooting scenes involving domestic violence.