Annette Bening reveals why she made a surprise cameo in ‘The Sopranos’
Although it was a crime saga and family drama at heart, one of the many reasons why The Sopranos is held in such esteem was its innate ability to seamlessly weave fantastical elements into its very real and supremely grounded narrative.
There are few shows in television history to have handled dream sequences in such style, with James Gandolfini’s patriarch of the titular family regularly allowing his subconscious to become the focus. As a result, it opened the door to many unexpected cameos, with Annette Bening prime among them.
In the season five instalment ‘The Test Dream’, the multi-time Academy Award nominee appears in an extended dream sequence that occupies roughly 20 minutes of the episode’s 50-minute running time. What made it even more impactful was that it came almost completely out of the blue, with Bening becoming the focal point of Tony’s unconscious mind.
After dozing off, the central figure of The Sopranos gets caught up in an existential escapade that combines his insecurities and anxieties with his favourite pop culture staples. It starts in a hotel room where he finds mafia figurehead Carmine Lupertazzi in his bed and relocates to Dr Melfi’s office, where Tony’s dead mistress, Gloria Tillo, is filling in before he ends up back at home with his wife, Carmela.
However, he still has to meet the parents of his daughter Meadow’s boyfriend. One of them is John Heard, the other is Bening. Tony asks if she’s Annette Bening, and she confirms that she is before getting increasingly irritated by his presence. It’s weird and unexpected, which is exactly why the actor was so keen.
“I received the episode out of nowhere, and read it, and thought, ‘Wow, this is fantastic, and bizarre, and surreal,'” Bening said to The Daily Beast. “I spoke to David Chase briefly, and went and shot it in a day in New York. You’re just in the midst of trying to find these moments and figure them out, so it was really fun.”
Even though she was a newcomer stepping into the midst of an established cast and crew who were five seasons deep into their labour of love, Bening had a fantastic time. “I could see, even as we did it, that this was a world in which all of the actors who were there every day working on the series, it was very familiar to them,” she continued. “They had been working long days for years and years, so it’s a lot of hard work for them. But it was a lot of fun, and really a lark!”
The Sopranos was fond of a cameo or two throughout its run, but none came further out of left field than Bening’s, who didn’t need much convincing to swing by for a day.
