Robert Iler & Jamie-Lynn Sigler¶
The two who grew up on camera. The series covers eight years of their actual adolescence in something close to real time, which is unusual for a drama and creates an effect no amount of casting can fake.
Robert Iler¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- March 2, 1985, New York City
- Role
- A.J. Soprano — cast at 13
- Emmy nomination
- 1 (2004)
He was a child commercial actor — best known for an Alaska tourism ad and a Pizza Hut spot — before being cast as A.J. at thirteen.
The performance has taken a lot of abuse over the years, most of it aimed at the character rather than the work. What Iler actually does is difficult: play someone who is neither a tragedy nor a joke, who is mediocre in a specific and unglamorous way, and who never gets a moment of competence to redeem him.
His best scene is the pool in "The Second Coming" (S6E84) — a suicide attempt that fails because the rope is too long, played without a shred of dignity, which is the point.
In 2001 he was arrested in connection with a robbery in Manhattan and pleaded to a lesser charge, receiving probation — at seventeen, while playing a character in escalating trouble. The production handled it quietly and he was never written out.
He largely stopped acting after the series, played poker professionally for several years, and now co-hosts the rewatch podcast Pajama Pants with Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- May 15, 1981, Jericho, NY
- Role
- Meadow Soprano — cast at 16
- Also
- Broadway, Entourage, Big Sky
Cast at sixteen, and the series follows her from a teenager to a woman in her mid-twenties.
Her arc is the show's argument about inheritance: Meadow starts as the one who says the word out loud — are you in the Mafia? — and ends as her father's most articulate defender, going into law to represent people like him. Sigler plays the conversion without ever letting Meadow notice it's happening.
She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 20, during production on the show, and told almost no one. She kept it private for fifteen years, disclosing publicly in 2016, and has since spoken about working through the middle seasons with symptoms nobody on set knew about.
Since the series: Broadway (Beauty and the Beast), Entourage, Ugly Betty, Big Sky, and MS advocacy work.
The parking space¶
Meadow's last scene in the series is her failing to parallel park outside Holsten's while her family waits inside — three cuts, protracted, slightly comic, and the last thing before the screen goes black.
Whatever reading of the ending you take, Chase gave a substantial share of the most-analyzed four minutes in television to an actress he'd cast as a sixteen-year-old, doing something completely ordinary. See The Ending.