The infamously secretive set apparently wasn’t closely guarded enough.

*The Sopranos *set had a leak, star Steve Schirripa says: ‘Somebody was selling information’

The infamously secretive set apparently wasn't closely guarded enough.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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February 22, 2026 5:30 p.m. ET

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'The Sopranos' cast members Joseph R. Gannascoli, Joe Pantoliano, Steve Schirripa, Steven Van Zandt, and James Gandolfini. Credit:

HBO/Courtesy Everett

Steve Schirripa still smells a rat.

The 68-year-old, Brooklyn-born actor recently looked back on his time on the indelible mob drama *The Sopranos*, which recently celebrated its 27th premiere anniversary. Together with Michael Imperioli, who played the erratic Christopher Moltisanti to his gentle, reliable Bobby Bacala, Schirripa opened up about the famously secretive set — and the extra precautions against that maybe should have been taken in hindsight.

"There was a leak on set because somebody was selling information," Schirripa alleged in a recent interview with *The Independent*. "We had some suspects," he explained, but the series' creative crew never did identify the source of the apparent leak.**

Steve Schirripa and James Gandolfini on 'The Sopranos'.

HBO/Kobal/Shutterstock

Imperioli noted that *The Sopranos *helped create the economy for such information, becoming one of the first "prestige" dramas of the modern eras to cultivate what he called an "intense fandom."

Still, Imperioli stated he would "never say anything bad about anybody... I mean, I could, but I won't. I'm sure people say bad things about me — I wouldn't be surprised — but we tried to keep it above the belt. No low blows. I find it not classy."

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*The Sopranos *premiered on HBO in 1999, and wound up running six seasons through 2007. While the series was critically praised from its inception, it took fans a few years to cotton on to twisty drama written and created by David Chase. But by its final season, *The Sopranos*' ratings surpassed most of its network competitors - a feat for a series broadcast on a premium cable channel.

That kind of devotion inspired displays of fandom that sometimes threatened the show's very existence on the air, however.

In 2002, the first four episodes of the series' fourth and highest rated season were leaked on the internet, spoiling plot details long before the advent of peak online spoiler culture, and the invention of defenses to stem such leaks.****

The cast of 'The Sopranos' in 2024.

Jason Mendez/Getty

One of the most memorable examples of the *Sopranos *crew responding to such threats came in the approach to the shocking decision to kill of Drea De Matteo's Adriana La Cerva. In a 2023 oral history of the scene from *GQ*, De Matteo recalled when Chase informed her "we're going to shoot it two ways. We’re gonna shoot it where you get away, and we're gonna shoot it where you get killed so I have options, and so we don't mess with the confidentiality on the show."

According to De Matteo, "none of us knew" how the season 5 episode that eventually featured Adriana's death would end — but that way, neither would any potential leakers.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Drama”