- A lot of people don't like rabbit. - My grandfather's way, only with Provencal elements
I been thinking about. (fire starts) (oil sizzling) (Arthur sniffs) - [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome back to "Binging with
Babish," where this week, you might see that I
look a little different, and that's because this
episode is a little different. Today, we are taking a look at the rabbit from "The Sopranos," my
favorite TV show of all time. And to join us is a very special guest. He is none other than Michael Gandolfini, portraying Tony Soprano in the upcoming "Many Saints of Newark" movie. Michael, come on out here! - Ohhh! - Ohhh! Oh! (chuckles) Do you say that in the movie at all? - Yeah, yeah, we get a few
good "Oh's," of course. - Well, thank you for coming through, man. - Absolutely, thank you for having me. - First, you know, you and I have kind of a weird history. (laughs) - Yeah, well it's
definitely a little weird, but no, I was filming Saints and you know, when you're on set and
kinda in the Soprano family, tensions run high, and you get home, and you're kinda buzzing, and it's kinda tough to fall asleep. So, I would put your show on and it would just kinda
soothe me to fall asleep. So, I kind of decided, well,
why don't I just DM this guy and say basically "Thank
you for helping me sleep!" And we got into a conversation, and- - And not like a week later was I walking through Chelsea Market and we locked eyes across the room, like, - Oh!
- Wait a minute. (laughs) - Yeah, wait, yeah. And now we have a beautiful friendship. - And now we're dear friends. - Yes. - And we play PS5 together. - Yes. Absolutely. - And we haven't played zombies mode. - Not yet, not yet. - But we'll get there. The
friendship has to grow. - Yeah, that takes- that's a new level. - Jess and I haven't even
played zombie modes yet and we're engaged. - Exactly, it's a commitment, yeah. - Right, Jess? Yeah. (both laugh) So, we are making Artie
Bucco's family rabbit, or coniglio alla famiglia. As it's- - Wow! Yeah? That's pretty good. - I memorized the entire show. - You practiced that? - It's his family rabbit recipe with some Provencal elements. Most notably, he's cooking with one hand. Because his hand was plunged
into a vat of simmering sauce. So, he is wrapped up in gauze, so I thought it would be fitting if, especially since you gave me one of my most prized possessions, which are Artie Bucco's actual chef whites from seasons one through
three of The Sopranos. - Yes, sir. - Look at that. Arthur.
From Vesuvio Duo. Right? (laughing) (talking over each other) - Yeah, the first one explodes. - Yeah, it explodes. So, I'm gonna transform
myself now into Artie Bucco by putting on his actual chef's whites. I haven't put 'em on
yet. How did we do this? Nobody's put a jacket on me in so long. Feel like a young woman again.
Oh, how small is this guy? Does Artie Bucco show up in the movie? 'Cause he was Tony's childhood friend. - I don't know, we'll have to see. - You can't tell me. I'm sorry. Come on, you can tell
me, pretend the camera- Okay. Is that good enough? I don't know. - You look great. - It's okay, all right. All right, I'm in Artie's
chef whites, which- smell faintly of cigars,
which is pretty awesome. - That's amazing. - Yeah. And now, let's
go ahead and pretend like my arm was just plunged
into a vat of hot sauce. And let's bandage me up, shall we? - All right, let's see. - Make it as difficult
as possible for me to- - You're not going to be able to move. - To cook. Like, at all, or? - At all. That's a threat, yeah. (muffled Babish noises) - All right, there's medical
grade tape right here. One of my favorite
things about The Sopranos is all the really over the top (bleep). If you told me there was a mobster movie where the chef friend of the main mobster had his hand plunged into
some boiling marinara sauce, I'd laugh you out of the room. - Totally. - But they managed to
do a really good job. - It's sort of like a cartoon combined with like a really dark drama, but like their favorite, um... (laughs) - Is this your first time doing this? This seems... very learned. - I feel like that's
pretty great, actually. - Yeah, I'm unable to cook with this hand. I think that's official. I don't think I can- I can't
grip anything with this hand. - Good. - All right, good stuff. (Babish screams) Well, now you're gonna
play the role, I guess, of the young couple that comes in and opens up a bottle of wine. - I love it. - And I'm gonna make you
dinner with the rabbit that I shot in my backyard. For the record, I did not shoot a rabbit. Because I am a (bleep) wimp.
And I'm not gonna do that. All right. So, now, first
thing I have to do- okay. Not using this hand. First thing I have to do is butcher this rabbit a little bit. - Mm, yummy. - Yeah, it's a rabbit,
oh, not using this hand. Gotta get used to this. I am right handed, this
is not my lucky day. There we go. Sorry, little friend. (laughs) How do you this with one hand? - Yeah. - All right, here we go. - You can use it, I
think we can agree that you're allowed to use it to sort of, - Stabilize things. - Stabilize things. - In that case, I'll use um- - I'll give you permission - Thank you. - If you get flagged
for it, I'll take that. - Gotta find the joint,
which usually goes along this little strip of fat here. Or I'm just going to cut
through. (knife bangs on table) - Yeah, there you go! - There we go, oh I
actually kinda had it. Okay. - You know, one of the funniest, every time I think about Tony and Artie, as me and you are Tony and Artie today- - (laughs) That's really funny. - The first line that
Tony says to Artie is uh, he goes, "Hey Artie, how's your rash?" And Artie goes, "Oh
well it, uh, it stings." Or something like that and that line was completely improvised. - Your dad improvising
that line was amazing but also his reaction is also
great, because he comes in, you immediately see what
a sad sack this man is. (laughs) Yeah I remember that line,
where he comes in and he's just like- - Yeah, exactly. - [Both, Together] Ooh, what is that? - That's an organ.
That's a kidney I think. Just scrape that right out of there. Here you go, a little souvenir. - I'll take it, yeah. (laughs) - Thank you. - You're welcome! And now just kinda gonna- (bangs knife) Ow. I need something to whack it with. You got the meat mallet or something? Cleaver! You wanna try cleaving it?
Hitting it right there? With all your strength.
Watch your fingers. - Just up and down? - Yeah, maybe even- (cleaver bangs) yeah. Look at that! Clean as a daisy. - There you go! - All right so, rabbit's butchered. And now I'm going to stew and
uh stew it with- (chuckles) we translated the recipe, visible on the page of Artie
Bucco's family cookbook, and he said he was incorporating
some Provencal elements so I'm going to introduce
some herbs that might not otherwise have been there. - And the ingredient that Artie, you need to have in there
too is Artie's like, little bit of desperation, - Little bit of desperation? (both laugh) - All right man, I'm
going to make you a meal. I don't know if it's going to be any good. Thanks for coming- (Babish screams). Thanks for coming through today. And uh, don't forgot your kidney. - I'll take it, thank you. - Thank you. First thing Artie does is sear the rabbit, when he puts the rabbit pieces in the pan they're very clearly seared. So I'm going to start
by searing the rabbit. See the math I just did there? How I got to A to B? Here we go. So I got some light olive
oil. Maybe a little bit more. - [Camera Person] You can't use your hand! - Oh yes, ah I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No hand. One hand, one hand. I'm also just gonna
season these guys lightly, a little bit of salt. Never
hurts to season your meat with salt separately, you want
to build layers of flavor. And also it helps meat
retain juices, right? Yes. Yes it does. (meat sizzles in pan) All right, lets throw
down some rabbit shall we? Get some color on these suckers. Ow. Okay. - [Michael] I'm gonna
ask you some questions. - Oh no. - Question one, do you
think Artie's a good cook? - I think Artie is a
good cook, absolutely. Uh, some of the stuff that he's made, when he gets excited about
food, I get excited about food. I got some nice fond on the
bottom of the pot, that's great. Okay, pancetta. So none of this is seen
in the show but uh, I don't want this fond, I
got this beautiful fond here, I don't want it to burn. And I want to render out the
fat from this pancetta so (pan sizzles) Just got a little bit of water. Do you think that Artie
deserved the things that happened to him in the show? - Hmm.Hmm. I agree that
he's sort of one of the uh victims in Tony's sort
of onslaught of tornado, he's sort of a walking tornado. But I also think that, and
this is a big part of the movie too, like you are what
you came from, right? Like Tony always says like, "What do you think that I
was go to sell pots in Peru?" Like, my dad was in it, my uncle was in it and I think that Artie's
dad was a chef and you know, he's kinda taken this life, in many ways, he's sort of what Tony admires because he opens his own
restaurant, he works hard and I think in some ways
Tony kind of idolizes that without too much, you know, he doesn't really want to be Artie, but I think he respects
him for those things. - So in the show he starts sauteing garlic which I'm not going to do just because I'm going to
burn the garlic if I do that. And I've got this beautiful
fond on the bottom of the pot, I don't want to waste
that, that all flavor. See all that brown (beep)? I
just threw that onion in there, it already brown. That's flavor. All right so now I'm
going to add some carrots and some celery. All right, this is starting
to look nicey nice. (spatula bangs on pan) Everything I'm doing looks dumb because I'm doing it with my left
hand. Just so you know. I don't look this stupid
normally when I'm doing stuff. - [Michael] Hey, you look good. (laughs) - You look good. - [Babish] That's a
really good impression. - Yeah, exactly. (laughs) - First up real quick, I'm going to throw some garlic in here. Minced, probably about, what
two cloves of minced garlic. Nailed it. Three? (beep) So he says that he's adding
some Provencal elements so I'm adding chopped
rosemary, thyme and sage. Okay now were gonna deglaze the pan with some (beep) tomatoes,
there we go. Aye. - If you could eat anywhere,
out of all the locations that they eat at in Sopranos, where would you want to go eat? - Oh, I mean just to say that I did, veal parm from Satriale's. - I would probably rather go to Vesuvio. But I want Vesuvio, end of
season one, like hurricane, like candle stick lights. Maybe we should eat this by
candle light, just me and you and (chuckles) - We got candles? We got candles? Okay, I'm gonna add like,
um, quarter cup of wine. About a half cup of chicken stock. Now, I'm gonna shove the
rabbit pieces in there. Really get nestled in
there. Nestled. Nestled! I'm bringing this all the way, oop- Bring this all the way
down to low and simmer it. Now we're going to, actually going to hit it
with a little bit of salt now just so the salt like cooks
into the nooks and crans. How am I gonna grind pepper? Oh, hey! Would you grind
some pepper for me? Here, come on over. Nice, nice, nice. That's good. All right, thank you. Okay, that's covering up and
getting stewed for 45 minutes, during which time I'm gonna
make a very simple risotto. Squirt of oil, a glob of butter. All right, onions nice and soft. Garlic going in and, also gonna add the arborio rice to toast it a little bit before starting. All right, in goes a little
splash of white wine. (pan sizzles) Two tablespoons. Going
to let that cook off. You've become quite close with the cast and I've seen some fun videos
of you and your girlfriend boxing with Jon Bernthal- - [Michael] Yes! - Which sounds like the scariest
thing in the world to me. (laughs) - He's the best, he is like the best. I mean they all are like, we
became family really quick which is like so cheesy
and like cliche but like, we really did for it to work like, the best nights sitting
around a table and just like, you know, being these characters and stepping into these rolls and eating, food around the table and yeah. - That's really great. Now so, you have all
these actors portraying younger versions of
these fully fleshed out beloved characters, I don't
want you to play favorites or anything but who, when
you watch them was like "Holy (beep)!" That's them? - I mean, the really annoying
answer but is so true is like, everyone. I mean, I think
that, you don't want to do an impersonation, you want to
be able to do your own thing. And I think what makes
David so smart and brilliant and the only way this is
possible was to go back in time. Everyone's at a different
point in their lives, the 60's, 70's, different you know. There's a lot of incredible
new characters too. - So your father had one of my favorite, one of my favorite
aspects of his character was the way he ate.
Which was disgustingly. - [Michael] Yes. - And most notably,
everything he would eat, especially ice cream,
he would stab and stir. (laughs) Just kind of like- - 100 percent. And there was
a reason he ate like that. So he didn't have to eat as much. If you move the pasta
around you don't have to be taking bites every five seconds, you move it around, kinda
look like you're eating but you're not actually
putting food into your mouth as much, so you didn't get as full. That's where it came from
but it became a habit to him and now I (beep) eat like that because I grew up watching him so like I, when I eat pasta that's
just how I learned to eat it by watching my dad, so I do
that just cause I inherited it. - I'm shying away from
asking you too many questions because I don't want to be like so, "Wow, playing your father,
that some big shoes to fill, how does that feel?" (laughs) - I think one of the things
that was awesome was like, I had never seen the show
but I got to become a fan of the show while watching it. A lot of the cast The
Deuce and Chris Bauer, who played my dad, really
helped my sort of navigate a lot of the emotions that were sort of coming up for the first time. I needed an initial purge. I mean look, I had 86
hours of a human being in every which way, he goes to therapy, I literally get the inside
head of a character. So I was able to sort of create that. - The perspective that I have
on you playing your father, not that you asked- (laughs) but as somebody who's also lost a parent, is that it's lovely that when what we do echos what our parents did. And what our parents do lives on in us. I make a cooking show, I film
and star in a cooking show. My mother loved to cook and
my dad is a photographer. And it's really nice, I
only realized like (beep) last week that that is
basically what my dad and my mom did and I'm
the amalgamation of that. - I actually sat in the movie theater after doing it for three
years of filming, re-shoots, of covid, a pandemic. Of
like sitting in that theater watching it being like, "Wow. Me and my dad got
to do this together." And it was such a cool feeling
that I didn't expect to have. I think I pushed it
away to be able to work and it was so cool to
have that actual feeling. - That's really (beep) nice,
I'm getting misty over here. (sniffles) For a very simple risotto
this is quite good, you want to try it? Get some more salt in there. And I made it with my left hand. Which, frankly, I'm
pretty proud of. (laughs) My left hand - My left hand. (laughs) So that's what we're going to
serve the rabbit over top of. - That's really good. - You dig it? (spatula bangs on pot) - Really good. - It's just as simple as risotto gets, just chicken stock, little
white wine, little garlic, little onion. - I can't believe you (beep) made that. - Thanks man! - I want to make that. - Make it! I'll show you how to make it. I should have showed you, I'm sorry. - That's so good! - All right so, risotto's done. This guy's simmering, I
just took off the lid. It's up to temp but I want
the liquid to be reduced a little bit more and I
want the rabbit to be like fall off the bone tender.
Tastes a little funny, because I don't like rabbit
that much. Ehh, that's life. (glass clinks) The (beep)? (laughs) Did you get that? Did you see that? Michael, dinner is
served. It's four o'clock. I'll serve us up, here we go.
So this is just as plain jane as risotto can be. I'm gonna
make a nice little bed, for the rabbit to sleep on.
Spoon some nice sauce over top. Vegetables. Okay and a
little bit of chopped parsley on top just to wake
things up a little bit. - Pine nuts. - Oh pine nuts! Thanks
Michael. Thanks Tony. (high pitched voice) "Damn it, Tony!" That's my best Carmela
impression. (laughs) - You're spot on. - I know. I'm gonna go ahead and
make things a little more romantic here. There we go. Is this
romantic or am I like a ghost from the 1800's? And now we eat. (laughs) (beep) I'm gonna eat with my left hand for the first time in my
life. See how this goes. - This is great. - Mmm. - Right? This is really good. (silverware clanking) - That's not bad at all,
I don't mind it at all. So Michael, you're in this
movie, The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos story. When does it come out? - It comes out on HBO Max
October 1st, and in theaters. I'm gonna go see it theaters. - It's an old fashioned movie, you go to the theaters to see the movie. - You go, you buy a ticket, you- - [Together] get popcorn. (laughs) - I'm going to be seeing it in theaters, I'll see you there, if you're
going to see it in theaters, I will be there. I'm
gonna be at every show. - There you go, you better
be there. You know, or else. - [Jess] Or else what? - Or else we'll be dearly upset with you. - Yeah, we'll be bummed. (laughs) - The modern mafia, "You
better (beep) be there, or I'm gonna be really hurt personally." - Its gonna hurt my feelings. - Thank you so much
for coming by (screams) I can't not do it, I can't not do it. One more time, I won't do that. Thank you so much for coming by man. - Thank you. - Thanks for wrapping up my
arm, thanks for having lunch slash dinner, "linner" with me. - I love linner. - I can't wait to see
you in this movie man. - I appreciate it. - Woo. Come here. (pats backs) Good to see you man. Lets eat this rabbit, stab at it and poke at it. (upbeat jazz music)
Glad you guys liked this! Lengthy comment because this is an important episode for us - not only did Jess direct and edit it, front-to-back (and crushed it, I might add), but it's one of those episodes I knew going in was gonna get low viewership (obscure dish, long runtime, guest host), and I didn't care. We're still jet-lagged from our trip, and we couldn't sleep, so we stayed up till 5AM last night tweaking and playing with the edit together like college kids. I'm so proud of it!
Couple fun facts for context - some folks thought that this was set up by the studio to promo the movie, when in fact we've been close friends for more than two years now (since he DM'd me on Instagram), and we decided to do this ourselves! I've met some really incredible people thanks to this show, and Michael continues to amaze me with his talent, kindness and empathy. He's got twice the heart (and brain) I did at his age.
Also, the Frasier shirt (which my brother gave me, it's a Frasier/Joy Division mash-up I honestly still can't figure out but I love) - Frasier might be my favorite sitcom, but I do think Sopranos is the best tv show ever made. I'm probably on my...fifth(?) watch-through of the series, and it is the funniest, saddest, most subversive drama I've ever seen, all while effectively reinventing modern television. It's a masterpiece, and I cannot imagine what Michael went through to film Saints, nor what he's going through now as the world prepares to see it - but I'm fucking psyched.
“The sopranos is my absolute favourite tv show” he says wearing a Frasier t-shirt… 😂
I am in full support of this series in the Babish Culinary Universe, "New Friendships With Babish," starring:
Now this man has the makings of a varsity athlete
This had a very "Botched with Babish" vibe and it was great!
Oof the part where Michael started talking about his father while watching the movie caught me right in the feels.
Probably the most romantic episode of Babish yet.
His grandfather was one of the kindest souls EVER
This was great. I usually skip the unscripted episodes—they’re not really my thing—but Michael was so charming and so endearing it was hard not to watch.