With writers and producers planning the fifth and final season of “Boardwalk Empire,” perhaps now is as good a time as any to look back on the prohibition-era gangster drama. And that’s just what happened last night in at The Greene Space at WNYC and WQXR in New York City. Steve Buscemi and “The Sopranos” creator David Chase sat down for a conversation lasting over an hour about antiheroes, and the talk touched upon one of the more shocking season finales in “Boardwalk Empire” thus far.
Needless to say **SPOILERS AHEAD** so if you haven’t watch the show yet, don’t complain (and why are you even reading this story to begin with?). Anyway, in the last episode of season two, Buscemi’s gangland honcho Nucky Thompson brutally murders his young protegé Jimmy Darmody (played by Michael Pitt) after he had betrayed him. It put an end to one of the central character pairings of the show in a rather harsh fashion, and Buscemi was initially hesitant.
“That’s a scene I did not want to do,” Buscemi explained. “I usually don’t call [writer] Terry [Winter] and talk about the character or the scenes, but this one I had to. I really wanted him to tell me why Nucky was doing it, and—this I learned from David—you don’t say, ‘My character wouldn’t do that,’ because David’s response would be, ‘Who said it was your character?’ “
“But my question to Terry was, ‘Why? Why is he doing this?’ And Terry had to remind me who this guy is and why he’s doing it,” Buscemi continued. “Because he could have had somebody else do it, but the fact he does it himself … I had trouble getting there.”
It’s an interesting reflection from Buscemi on the scene and his character, and we’ll leave it to you to let us know in the comments section how you felt about the season two finale. Check out the full talk between Chase and Buscemi below. [Indiewire]
