The Sopranos is a show that tackles many themes relevant to its time. Airing between 1999 and 2007, the show took a very nuanced look at evil and its interplay with consumerism and capitalism. The Sopranos remains one of the best dramas on television. Given how the last twenty-one years have played out, it would be interesting to imagine how differently the show would approach its themes were it made today.

Michael Imperioli did exactly that while sitting down with The Independent to talk about the show. He mentioned that if the show were made today, then a few of the important themes that it would focus on would be immigration and the American dream. He told the publication,

The show is about the American dream, especially through the eyes of immigrants. I think that would be one of the big themes if it were made today: the current climate in the US and what they’re doing to immigrants. The fact is that these characters are all immigrants, but I think a lot of them would probably be Trump supporters, oddly enough. So how do they reconcile those things? When Italians came over – and people forget this, or they don’t want to see it – a lot of them were undocumented.

Remember when Tony Soprano got mad about his daughter talking to a Black man? Yeah, he’d be MAGA, alright.

David Chase Revealed What Tony Soprano Would Think of President Donald Trump

Despite Imperioli’s take that a lot of the characters would be Trump supporters, show creator David Chase revealed what he thinks Tony Soprano would have actually thought about the current President of the United States. He said, as reported by The New York Times in 2019:

He would think the guy was full of [expletive]. Whether he thought he was a good president or not — I don’t know that Tony thought much about that question at all, with anybody who was in office. But I know Tony would have thought Trump was penny-ante, in terms of his lying and presentation.

While Tony would likely be onboard with all the reforms that Trump is bringing in, he would have judged Trump as a person very differently. All signs in the show point towards how familiar and comfortable most of the characters would be with Donald Trump and his policies, but there would be a lot of tension between how Trump would appear to Tony and what he would think about him.

The Sopranos Has Always Been About The Dark Side of The American Dream

Long before Trump was a political figure, The Sopranos was already interrogating the very values his movement would come to represent. Chase did not set out to make a show about a gangster; he set out to make a show about America. The mob was simply the most honest lens through which to examine it. Strip away the violence and the wiseguy dialogue, and what you are left with is a portrait of a man who has everything the American dream promised him, and is still miserable.

That misery matters. Tony Soprano is not unhappy because he failed. He is unhappy because he succeeded, and it still was not enough. The show uses that emptiness to ask a question that feels just as relevant today as it did in 1999, what happens when the American dream stops feeling like a promise and starts feeling like a lie?

The Sopranos does not offer a reassuring answer. When people feel like what they have worked for is under threat, they do not stop and reflect, they lash out. They hold tighter to what they have, they blame the people coming up behind them, and they chase a version of greatness that probably never existed to begin with. It is hard to watch the show today and not see that same pattern playing out in American politics.

NameThe SopranosCreatorDavid ChaseMain CastJames Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Dominic ChianeseSeasons6Number of Episodes86Rotten Tomatoes92%IMDb9.2/10

Chase wove that idea into every corner of the series. The big house that never feels like a home. The therapy sessions where Tony talks for hours but never really says anything. The ducks that fly away at the start of the show and never come back. The Sopranos was always a goodbye letter to a certain idea of America. The fact that it now feels like it was predicting the future may be the most remarkable thing about it.

What do you think? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

The Sopranos can be streamed on HBO Max.
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