in 1967 at the height of the Vietnam war, my mother said to me, 'I'd rather see you dead than avoid the draft.'"
‘I wrote The Sopranos to get over my mother wishing me dead’: David Chase on his mob masterpiece – and his new LSD epic
However, you could argue that this whole circus was constructed because of one man. A few decades ago, HBO was a little-seen backwater of sport and standup. One show propelled it to the forefront of prestige television. That show was The Sopranos. The man who created it is David Chase.
Not that Chase will let himself be complimented like that. “Luck had an amazing amount to do with it,” he says, correcting my thesis before our interview has even begun. “HBO wanted to change their business model. They wanted to do original programming, and the script for The Sopranos had been turned down by every network in the States.”
Though Chase is in London to stump for HBO Max, he has long been famously ambivalent about TV. The Sopranos came after a long career in network television, writing on shows including The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure. “I’d been taking network notes and eating network shit for however many years, and I was done with it,” he says of his time spent developing The Sopranos. “And, you know, if The Sopranos hadn’t worked, I don’t know what I would have done. I was done with TV.”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/mar/27/sopranos-writer-david-chase-interview-mother-james-gandolfini-mk-ultra-cia-lsd
I bet the new series is going to be a banger