After Tony

David Chase returns to The Sopranos, the masterpiece he’s been unable to escape since it went off the air 14 years ago

- By Matt Zoller Seitz

DAVID CHASE IS TELLING STORIES AGAIN.

The 76-year-old creator of The Sopranos is seated at the kitchen table of a production office in Santa Monica, eating takeout Mexican food and telling me about the time his paternal grandfather, Joseph Fusco, confessed to killing a man. Fusco told the story to a then-12-year-old Chase, who had been sent to Fusco’s apple farm in Hudson, New York, for a week during summer vacation. They were sitting in the kitchen one night after dinner, green apples piled in a bowl between them. “He was telling me he murdered a guy in Buffalo,” Chase recalls. “They got in an argument in a bar. They went outside.” Things escalated—Fusco hit him in the head with a brick. The other guy was a romano— Roman—though not from his grandfather’s area. “Fusco was bad news. Bad guy.” Chase pauses a moment, staring at his rice and beans in a Styrofoam box. “Who knows if it’s true?” he says finally. “But why would you tell that to a 12-year-old kid who’s staying with you? Who the fuck does that?”