Christopher Moltisanti¶
At a glance¶
- Played by
- Michael Imperioli
- Born
- 1969
- Died
- 2007 — suffocated by Tony after a car crash, "Kennedy and Heidi" (S6E83)
- Father
- Dickie Moltisanti (d. 1972)
- Relation to Tony
- Carmela's first cousin; Tony's "nephew" in practice
- Position
- Soldier → capo → acting underboss
- Fiancée
- Adriana La Cerva
- Emmy
- Supporting Actor, 2004
I got no identity. Even my own mother, all she does is criticize me.
The show's saddest arc, and the one that most directly indicts Tony.
The relationship¶
Christopher is Carmela's first cousin — not a blood relative of Tony's, despite constant use of "nephew." Functionally, he's Tony's son. His father, Dickie Moltisanti, was killed in 1972, and Tony stepped into the gap.
That's the tragedy in one line: a man raised by Tony Soprano to be like Tony Soprano, who lacks the constitution for it and can't be anything else.
Tony genuinely loves him. Tony also uses him, humiliates him, promotes him past his competence, beats him, tolerates his addiction until it becomes inconvenient, and eventually kills him.
The arc¶
Seasons 1–2. Ambitious, impatient, and desperate for recognition. He wants an arc — he says so, in those terms, having read a screenwriting book. He's a genuinely dangerous young man who shoots a bakery clerk in the foot over a delayed order.
"D-Girl" and the screenwriting. He goes to Hollywood, meets a development executive, and discovers that people like him are content. Later he writes Cleaver, a slasher film in which a mob boss is killed by his protégé — a script Tony correctly reads as a confession and a threat, and about which he can say nothing.
Season 3. Made. It should be the thing he's wanted his whole life. It changes nothing.
Seasons 4–5. Heroin. The intervention in "The Strong, Silent Type" is one of the show's funniest and most excruciating sequences — a room full of murderers using recovery language, ending in a beating.
Season 5, "Long Term Parking." Adriana tells him she's been informing. He considers running with her. He then sees a man at a gas station screaming at his family, decides he can't live that life, and calls Tony instead. He is trading her life for his position and he knows it.
Season 6. He relapses, marries Kelli, has a daughter, and is increasingly openly resentful.
"Kennedy and Heidi"¶
Driving Tony home, high, Christopher crosses the median and rolls the car. Tony climbs out. Christopher is conscious, badly hurt, and says he'll never pass the drug test — he's going to lose his license.
Tony looks into the back seat. The child seat is crushed by a branch through the roof.
He leans in and pinches his nephew's nose shut until he stops breathing.
Then he calls it in, is treated as a hero, and flies to Las Vegas — where he sleeps with a woman Christopher knew, takes peyote, wins repeatedly at roulette, and shouts I get it! at the desert sunrise.
What he gets is that he's relieved. The most honest thing Tony ever admits — and he admits it to a sunrise, not a person.
The eulogy he gives is about what a burden Christopher was.
Michael Imperioli¶
Imperioli won the 2004 Emmy for Supporting Actor and was nominated four more times. He also wrote five episodes of the series — including "From Where to Eternity," "Christopher," and "Everybody Shits" — making him one of the very few actors to write substantially for the show he starred in.
He had already been shot in the foot in Goodfellas — as Spider, by Joe Pesci — which the Sopranos bakery scene inverts as a deliberate joke. He's one of 27 actors appearing in both.
Since 2020 he has co-hosted Talking Sopranos with Steve Schirripa, which drove a large part of the show's streaming-era revival.