Minor Characters¶

Everyone else worth knowing, grouped roughly by world.

The crew¶

Hesh Rabkin (Jerry Adler) — Tony's business advisor and Johnny Boy's before him. A former record executive who did to Black artists in the 1960s roughly what the family does to everyone, which the show notes without letting him off. Being Jewish, he can never be made, and is trusted more than most who are. His scenes with Tony are the closest thing Tony has to talking with a father.

Patsy Parisi (Dan Grimaldi) — Twin brother of Philly Parisi, whom Tony had killed in season two. Patsy comes within a drink of shooting Tony over it, urinates in his pool instead, and then quietly serves him for five more years. The show's best study of accommodation.

Benny Fazio (Max Casella) — Younger-generation soldier; useful, ambitious, and increasingly brutal.

Eugene Pontecorvo (Robert Funaro) — Season six. Inherits money, wants to move to Florida, and discovers that neither the FBI (whose informant he is) nor Tony will let him leave. Hangs himself in his basement in episode two. A complete tragedy in about forty minutes of screen time.

Furio, Big Pussy, Ralph, Vito, Bobby, Richie have their own pages.

Jackie Aprile Sr. (Michael Rispoli) — Acting boss; dies of cancer in season one, setting the succession in motion.

Jackie Aprile Jr. (Jason Cerbone) — His son. Tries to be a gangster, robs a card game, and is killed on Ralph's order while Tony pretends not to have known it would happen. Meadow's boyfriend, and the reason A.J.'s panic attacks start.

Mikey Palmice (Al Sapienza) — Junior's enforcer in season one. Killed by Christopher and Paulie.

Richie's brother, Little Paulie, Murmur, Carlo Gervasi — the deeper bench. Carlo's flip, revealed in the final episode, is the loose end the series ends on.

The law¶

Agent Dwight Harris (Matt Servitto) — The FBI agent assigned to Tony across all six seasons, and the show's strangest relationship. The two develop something almost like a friendship: Harris eats at Satriale's, gets sandwiches, and after 9/11 reassignment to counterterrorism begins trading information with Tony. In the finale he receives news of Phil Leotardo's death and says we're gonna win this thing — a line that has generated as much argument as anything in the ending.

Agent Deborah Ciccerone (Lola Glaudini) — Goes undercover as "Danielle" to befriend and flip Adriana. The show is unusually honest about what the operation costs a person who did nothing.

The women¶

Gloria Trillo (Annabella Sciorra) — Tony's season-three mistress, a Mercedes saleswoman he meets in Melfi's waiting room. Volatile, funny, and — as Melfi eventually names out loud — the same person as his mother. She kills herself after Tony ends it, and appears in his dreams for the rest of the series.

Rosalie Aprile (Sharon Angela) — Jackie Sr.'s widow, later Ralph's partner. Carmela's closest friend, and the person who has most thoroughly made peace with the arrangement.

Charmaine Bucco (Kathrine Narducci) — Artie's wife and the most clear-eyed person in the series. Refuses to be charmed by Tony, refuses the comped meals, and remembers that she used to clean Carmela's house.

Dr. Elliot Kupferberg (Peter Bogdanovich) — Melfi's own therapist, thrilled to be adjacent to a real gangster and unable to stop leaking it. Bogdanovich also directed "Sentimental Education" (S5E58).

Svetlana Kirilenko (Alla Kliouka) — Livia's home aide, later Janice's nemesis and briefly Tony's lover. One-legged, entirely unsentimental, and the person who delivers the show's sharpest diagnosis of Americans: that they expect to be happy and have no idea what to do when they aren't.

Father Phil Intintola (Paul Schulze) — Parish priest with an appetite for wine, film discussion, and the attention of unhappy married women. Carmela's almost-affair in season one.

The civilians¶

Davey Scatino (Robert Patrick) — A school friend with a gambling problem and a sporting goods store. Tony lets him into the Executive Game knowing exactly what will happen, then dismantles the business through a bust-out. Season two's clearest explanation of how the money actually works.

Robert Wegler (David Strathairn) — A.J.'s guidance counselor and briefly Carmela's lover, who ends things by telling her, accurately, that she used him.

Noah Tannenbaum (Patrick Tully) — Meadow's college boyfriend, dismissed by Tony in a scene of unambiguous racism that the show presents without cushioning.

Jim "Johnny Cakes" Witowski (John Costelloe) — The New Hampshire firefighter Vito falls in love with.

The Lupertazzis¶

Carmine Lupertazzi Sr. (Tony Lip) — New York boss; dies of a stroke in season five, touching off the succession war. Tony Lip was a real-life former bouncer and driver, and the subject of Green Book.

Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo) — His son. Withdraws from the succession, and is responsible for the show's finest malapropisms — including a description of a situation as a "revolving door of terror."

Butch DeConcini (Greg Antonacci) — Phil's underboss, who ends the war by quietly authorizing his boss's death.