Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Gay Vito But Were Afraid To Ask
The morning after The Sopranos' Gay Vito Spatafore cemented his status as the breakout character of the new season [SPOILER ALERT] by being caught cavorting in a leather bar by a couple of wiseguys, the AP profiles the man behind the bear mobster, actor Joseph R. Giannascoli. Giannascoli claims that taking Vito's arc gayward was his own, somewhat cynical idea, a ploy to push his character from "Hey, want some more gabbagoo, Tone?" Satriale's back room space-filler to front-and-center made guy, and shares some of the colorful past (gambler, restaurateur, and dabbling drug-dealer) that gives so many Sopranos regulars a tinge of authenticity:
He considered becoming a lawyer like his older brother but dropped out of St. John's University after two years. He did well the first year but by his second year, "I had a huge Quaalude business" that sidetracked him. ("I was hustlin', you know.")
Not that we'd ever question a soon-to-be-mob-typecast actor's bonafides, but we wouldn't be that surprised if selling a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills to a clueless freshman became a "huge Quaalude business" sometime between his brief college career and answering dozens of questions by reporters digging for insights into what makes Gay Vito tick.
