The sopranos star, James Gandolfini, has almost played in a beloved drama of Stephen King

In his race too hacked as an actor, James Gandolfini made a name for himself by playing brutal men hiding a complex emotivity under their external cold. When he died suddenly in 2013, he left us a filmography filled with roles of exceptional characters and empathetic tracks in everything, blockbusters like “Crimson Tide” to comedies like “quite said”.

But even with these stellar parts, we always want us to see more Gandolfini, letting the fans look at the roles he almost played and imagine what we could have had. One of these parties would have been his most frightening and horrible bad guys, which really says something given the vile work he put in “the sopranos”, despite the fact that he did not even want to audition.

Because before being the working ankle of the Italian mafia, Gandolfini almost played in the adaptation of Frank Darabont of “The Shawshank Redemption”, but he had to suddenly leave production at the last moment because of another role.

When Andy Dufresne of Tim Robbins arrives at the Shawshank state penitentiary, he quickly made a friend in Ellis “Red” by Morgan Freeman. Their link forms the heart of the film, but its heat contrasts strongly with the terror inflicted on Bogs Diamond, chief of the gang “The Sisters”. The role is perfectly played by the actor “Aliens” Mark Rolston, but in an interview with USA Today, the writer and director Frank Darabont revealed that they had initially thrown James Gandolfini into the game.

At the time, he was still an “unknown guy” working on productions outside Broadway, but his hearing struck Darabass and his team and they offered him the position immediately. But before they could draw the role, Gandolfinni withdrew from “Shawshank Redemption” because he had been thrown into the classic of Tony Scott “True Romance” from 1993 (seen above). Darabont says they were “no gruddy” towards Gandolfini for having abandoned, because they knew that this role “was going to serve his career”.

After Gandolfini left the role, Darabont played a new series of auditions, that is to say at this moment that Mark Rolston crossed the doors, and Darabont could not have been happier. “I am the biggest fan of” extraterrestrials “. He had me in” Hello “, says Darabont. “I loved working with this guy. He brought something indelible.”

In the end, Darabont was right, with the role of Gandolfini in “True Romance” opening the way to his to face Tony Soprano, one of the decisive roles in the history of television. We will just have to imagine how threatening he would have been in the cells of the cold prison of the Shawshank State.