Carmela Soprano

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Carmela Soprano née DeAngelis, played by Edie Falco, is a fictional character on the HBO TV series The Sopranos. She is the wife of mafia boss Tony Soprano. A remarkably complex character, she is the female lead of the series.

Character overview

Carmela was Tony Soprano's high school sweetheart and they married at a young age. Carmela is capable, organized and resourceful and puts her family first. Carmela tries to maintain the Soprano household while Tony is out working. At times, she seems to be the stereotypical mob boss's wife: supportive and friendly, even strong at times, while rarely asking about details of her husband's work. Tony has trusted his wife enough to confide in her, to a degree, about some of his Mafia dealings, notably the failed attempt on his life and the death of Richie Aprile. However, the years of having a husband missing at all hours, coupled with his constant infidelity, have put a serious strain on their relationship at times and they even separated for a period. Carmela is also an observant Roman Catholic and has difficulty rationalizing both her husband's profession and her subsequent separation.

While generally understood as good, Carmela's character is a complicated one. She has sometimes sacrificed her children's security for the sake of a few gold watches, but has defended her children when they did something wrong. She has shown herself willing to use her mob-wife status to intimidate others, as she did in "Full Leather Jacket," where she not-too-subtly commanded her neighbor's Georgetown-alumna sister into writing a letter of recommendation for Meadow to Georgetown, so that Meadow would not go to UC Berkeley but stay closer to home. Also, she discarded a letter from Berkeley to Meadow requesting transcripts, but later retrieved it from the trash in a moment of guilt. While she is very proud of Meadow's accomplishments and ambition, she partly resents her for achieving the independence she always wanted. She constantly frets over A.J.'s troubles and inactivity, yet tends to coddle him and is unwilling to impose any real restrictions on him. She has trouble with her husband's profession but still loves him anyway.

Carmela's resentment of her husband's infidelity has often driven her to the brink of breaking her marriage vows during some sexually charged moments with her priest, Father Phil Intintola, and painter-decorator Vic Musto. During the fourth season, Carmela had a mutual romantic infatuation with Furio Giunta, one of Tony's men. Carmela had reached a low point with Tony's constant string of affairs and the two had a romantically-tense but "arms-length" relationship for a period. Each confided to separate friends that they were falling for each other but Furio, fearing for his life if he loved the boss' wife, sold his house and moved back to Italy. This sent Carmela into depression, and led her to further resent Meadow for being in love with her boyfriend, Finn.

By the end of the fourth season, Tony and Carmela separated after she learned of his latest indiscretion, although Tony continued to provide for her and the children. Carmela even began dating A.J.'s guidance counselor, Robert Wegler, and pursuing divorce proceedings against Tony, but was drawn back to her husband by financial concerns and difficulties in rearing A.J., as well as a difficult breakup with Wegler, who accused Carmela of manipulating him into special treatment for her son, which she may have indeed been doing. At the end of the fifth season, Carmela agreed to reunite with Tony after he agreed to purchase a $600,000 investment property in Montville, under Carmela's name, so she could build a spec house. Despite some initial awkwardness, the two were firmly reunited after Tony was shot by his uncle, Junior Soprano, both during his coma and after his hospital release. The crisis seems to have strengthened their bond.

Carmela's willingness to look the other way regarding Tony's numerous infidelities over the years, as well as her acceptance of the fruits of Tony's labor without regard to how they were earned, combined with her decision to get back together with Tony in exchange for his purchasing the investment property, have led some fans to believe that Carmela is primarily motivated by greed. Other fans have speculated that it is not so much Carmela's materialism than it is fear of having to make it on her own if she were to lose Tony. She has admitted she is not sure whether she loves her husband in spite of his criminal lifestyle, or because of it, but she rationalizes it by saying that "there are far bigger crooks than my husband."

Carmela's materialistic nature, however, is never far from the surface. After Tony surprised his delighted wife with a Porsche Cayenne, Carmela proceeded to flaunt her new car in front of Ginny Sacrimoni and Angie Bonpensiero, both of whom were reported to be having serious financial problems. Carmela was somewhat embarrassed when Angie admired Carmela's car and told her that she recently purchased a Corvette with her own money, showing that Angie had significantly turned her money problems around through inheriting her late husband's body shop and making it profitable. This had shown that while Carmela had much in the way of material possessions, she was unsure she could make money on her own as Angie had.

Carmela's own efforts to become financially independent have been less successful, as Tony neglected to intervene for a long period when an inspector determined that materials used on her spec house were not up to code, thereby halting construction and straining her relationship with her father, who was building the house for her. Tony later recanted, however, and ordered Silvio Dante to lean on the inspector to change his mind. Around this time, Carmela was concerned for the whereabouts of Adriana La Cerva, who seemingly had disappeared. When she questions Tony about this, he tells her that Adriana had broken up with Christopher Moltisanti and ran off with another man. Carmela's concern intensified when she encountered Adriana's mother, Liz La Cerva, at the Feast of St. Elzear (Episode 74, The Ride). Liz, who has stopped taking care of herself, tells Carmela that Christopher is responsible for Adriana’s death, going on to say the FBI told her so. The next day, Carmela confronts Tony, who dismisses her: "Let me school you on domestic violence," he says. "First and foremost, there is always a body."

Carmela did not know that Adriana was a low-level informant for the FBI and that Christopher, who had learned the truth from Adriana, informed Tony, who in turn had her executed by Silvio. She is also unaware that Tony suffocated Christopher on his own blood after Christopher flipped the SUV they were in off the highway. Her grief for her cousin, however, is soon eclipsed by her concern for A.J. after he tries to drown himself in the family pool and is placed in the psychiatric ward at Mountainside Hospital. Carmela, along with Tony, encourages him to become part of the production team for a film written by Daniel Baldwin and financed by Little Carmine, rather than enlist in the Army. She is shown considering building plans for a beach house, and in the final scene of the series, she meets Tony at a diner for a family meal.

Throughout Series 1-5 Carmela drives a silver Mercedes-Benz E320 Estate. In early episodes it is actually a Mercedes-Benz W124, then it changes to a current model W210 E-Class (1995-2002). In "Members Only" Tony buys her a new Porsche Cayenne S, which she drives for the remainder of the show.

The Godfather reference

Carmela Soprano appears to be strongly inspired by the Godfather character Carmela Corleone. Carmela Corleone (also referred in movies and novels as 'Mama') is the wife of Don Vito Corleone. Apart from name similarity, and the fact that their husbands are the bosses of the families they are in, both characters are strongly religious (In the novel, devoutly Catholic Carmela went to mass every day to pray for her husband's soul). Coincidentally, former gangster Henry Hill's mother was named Carmella.

External links

• HBO Character Profile: Carmela Soprano