Terence Winter on Original Plans for Livia in Season 3 of “The Sopranos”

So after months of waiting, I was finally able to get through to writer Terence Winter on the original plans for Livia in Season 3. He had this to say:

In short, Terry said that when Nancy Marchand died, they were still in the very early stages of planning Season 3 and what they were going to do with the stolen airline tickets. He said they couldn’t have had more then one or two episodes planned before she passed, but he doesn’t remember what they were (or how fleshed out they could have been).

I asked if he thinks Livia would have testified against Tony for the stolen tickets and he said that’s theirs a very good chance she might of “it’s certainly in line with that character”. I also asked if Tony would have responded by putting out a hit or something of that sort he said that also could have been very likely considering he tried to smother her with a pillow, but they didn’t get far enough to say for sure that would have been the case.

I also asked what else about Season 3 was changed in light of Marchand death, like Janice and Gloria being in Season 3. He said Janice “probably stepped up after Nancy’s death since we put her on a bus at the end of the last season only for her to be right back a few episodes later”, he was unsure about Gloria however.

Juniors Dementia was something else I brought up because their are certain theories that say it was originally meant for Livia. To that, he said “While it's certainly possible that had Livia survived, a lot of the emotional dynamic between Tony and Junior would have been with her, but as far as I can recall, we didn't think that far ahead with the dementia storyline”. He did say though that Ralphie, NY vs NJ, and Pine Barrens were all aspects of S3 that still would have made it in anyway (along with Jackie Jr. and Christopher getting made which were teased at the end of Season 2 anyway). Svetlana too he said would have still been Livia's caretaker in Season 3 because they liked the actress so much. I imagine we probably would’ve gotten some fun chemistry between them!

So that's pretty much everything. Would love to get everybody's thoughts on this! I hope maybe I could get through to David Chase himself on this on at some point, IF!

 

Too bad because I didn't like in 3 how the kids were more in the forefront, or most of the Jackie Jr. storyline.