No one involved in The Sopranos believed that it would become a ground-shaking program, he said. The show had already been rejected at every broadcast network. Albrecht liked the script, but only enough to pay for a pilot episode.
Even at HBO, there were differences on several issues, especially about who would play the lead. Brad Grey, one of the show's producers, recalled that HBO was not thrilled with James Gandolfini at first, though he won them over.
Grey's partner, Chase, said HBO also did not like the name of the show. "They thought it would sound too much like a music show, that people would confuse it with the Three Tenors," he said. "I think they wanted something like Family Man. But they always listened when we objected."
HBO tested the pilot, and the results were mediocre -- at best. Albrecht, who liked the pilot, showed it to Bewkes, who did, too. So Albrecht ordered the show to go ahead. But he had one more issue with Chase: He did not want Tony Soprano to kill someone with his bare hands in the first season.
"Chris told me: `You've created the most interesting television hero in years in the first four episodes and you're going to destroy him in the fifth,'" Chase recalled. "I told him that if Tony doesn't kill this guy, this traitor, the fans will never believe in him."
They compromised, Chase said, after Albrecht asked him to write in a scene that had Tony's victim becoming involved in a drug deal, the better to make him unsympathetic. That episode, in which Tony takes his daughter to Maine to look at colleges, is now hailed as one of the best television episodes ever produced.
Albrecht now faces the daunting task of having to replace it, probably after one more season if Chase holds to his plan to conclude the series next year.
"I'm not worried about what happens after The Sopranos; I really believe that," he said. "As great as that show is and as grateful as we'll always be to have been associated with it, there are other great shows out there."
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