Edie Falco felt a special connection with 'The Sopranos' co-star James Gandolfini.

James Gandolfini and Edie Falco

James Gandolfini and Edie Falco

The 58-year-old actress played the wife of mafia boss Tony Soprano on the long-running crime drama and has opened up about working with her castmate, who portrayed her on-screen husband and sadly died of a heart attack at the age of 51 in 2013.

She said: "We had such a strangely specific, similar way that we work, and a similar background. I don’t know how to explain this. We were just really regular middle-class, suburban kids that were never supposed to become famous actors.

"My interpretation is that the whole time, he was, like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I remember, when we got picked up for the second season, he said to me, ‘Yeah, well, I just have no idea what the hell we did, but we’ve got to try to do it again.’

"And I said, ‘I hear you. I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.' "

The pair worked together on the iconic drama series for almost a decade and the show went on to be widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time.

Speaking to 'Entertainment Tonight', Edie added: "[He] was totally un-actor-y, and was incredibly self-deprecating, and he was a real soul mate in that regard.

"We did not spend a lot of time talking about the scripts. It was like when you see two kids playing in the sandbox, completely immersed in their imaginary world. That’s what it felt like acting opposite Jim.”

The actress also opened up about the dynamics of her character Carmela Soprano on the show that set out to depict America in decline.

She explained: "I think Carmela was very much firmly planted in the idea of ritual and tradition. I sort of felt that she thought things would be as they had always been.

"From my vantage point, the show was a story of an Italian-American family who had a rather unique way of making money. For some people, it was a straight-up mob show.

"Maybe that’s one of the reasons it was successful, is that it appealed to lots of different people for lots of different reasons.”

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