Sopranos Star Dominic Chianese Launches Podcast at 95

Dominic Chianese and his son, Dominic Chianese Jr., launch Dominic & Junior. Official episode artwork from the Dominic Chianese YouTube channel; used for editorial reporting.

The new Dominic Chianese podcast is officially underway. The 95-year-old actor who played Corrado “Junior” Soprano launched Dominic & Junior with his son, Dominic Chianese Jr., on September 1, 2026, creating a direct outlet for stories about family, music, New York and a career that stretches from the stage to The Godfather Part II and The Sopranos.

The timing gives the project more weight than a routine celebrity rewatch show. Chianese told People that he has been thinking about legacy, while his son described the value of preserving stories for later generations. The result is designed to introduce the man behind Uncle Junior without pretending that the role fans quote back to him has stopped mattering.

What to Know

• The launch: Dominic & Junior premiered on YouTube on September 1, 2026.
• The format: Chianese and his son plan conversations about acting, music, family, New York and behind-the-scenes career memories.
• What comes next: Later episodes are expected to include colleagues from The Sopranos, while the premiere concentrates on Chianese’s own life and work.

Dominic & Junior is a father-son history project

The show is hosted by Chianese and his 62-year-old son, with production partner Peter Mastrogiacomo of Grayson Sky. According to the official podcast description, its scope reaches beyond one television series: Italian-American culture, Broadway, music, fatherhood, old New York and the stories a family decides are worth passing down.

That broad frame matters. Chianese spent decades working before The Sopranos made him internationally recognizable. He performed onstage long before appearing as Johnny Ola in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II, and he continued acting after HBO’s mob drama ended, including a recurring role as Leander Whitlock on Boardwalk Empire.

In his launch interview, Chianese admitted that speaking to a potentially huge audience initially felt intimidating. His son’s answer was practical: the elder Chianese still wanted to work, and a self-produced video podcast could place his voice before viewers without waiting on an agent, audition or studio. It is a late-career move, but not a retirement exercise.

Their stated purpose is preservation. Chianese Jr. said he already knows many of his father’s stories, yet recording them creates something his own descendants can watch. That turns Dominic & Junior into more than promotion. It is an oral history shaped by the easy friction and familiarity of two generations sitting across from each other.

The first episode starts before Uncle Junior

The premiere, titled “Uncle Junior on James Gandolfini, The Sopranos & 70 Years of Acting,” begins with Chianese’s route into performance. He discusses childhood music, the stage and the moment acting began to look like a viable profession. The episode also reaches the career turning points that mob-film audiences know best.

Chianese recalls that The Godfather Part II was his first film and credits Al Pacino with helping him enter that world after years in theater. More than two decades later, David Chase cast him as Tony Soprano’s uncle. Chianese says Chase initially warned that Junior might appear in only a small number of episodes, but the character instead became part of the series’ full dramatic architecture.

The podcast also lets him speak about James Gandolfini as a colleague rather than an icon. Chianese remembers Gandolfini’s warmth and generosity, including his efforts on behalf of the cast. Those memories connect naturally with our report on Michael Imperioli’s account of the day Gandolfini died: the public image of Tony Soprano remains inseparable from the private loyalty castmates still describe.

Chianese also reflects on Nancy Marchand and Vincent Pastore. That gives the premiere an elegiac layer without making it a memorial program. The point is to preserve working relationships, creative lessons and personalities that cannot be recovered from episode summaries alone.

Uncle Junior made room for Chianese’s whole range

Junior Soprano could be vain, cruel, frightened, hilarious and heartbreaking, sometimes within the same hour. Chianese’s performance resisted turning him into a punch-line machine. Even the show’s most repeated insults carried the wounded pride of a man watching power move to a younger generation.

HBO’s official character guide identifies Junior as Tony’s uncle and an old-school figure inside the family, while the Television Academy records two supporting-actor Emmy nominations for Chianese, in 2000 and 2001. Those nominations recognized a performance built as much from timing and vulnerability as from menace.

His musical life also entered the series directly. Chianese’s performance of “Core ’ngrato” closes the Season 3 finale, “Army of One,” turning a mob gathering into a moment of grief, nostalgia and cultural distance. The scene works because the singing is not a novelty pasted onto Junior; it reveals an emotional register the character’s everyday suspicion usually conceals.

The role’s later deterioration demanded a different kind of control. Junior’s dementia gradually strips away his authority and even his ability to recognize Tony. Our explanation of why Junior shot Tony in the Season 6 premiere draws on Chianese’s own understanding that the character no longer knew what he was doing. The new podcast can add context to that craft without reducing the performance to plot trivia.

The show joins a larger Sopranos oral history

The Sopranos has developed an unusually rich afterlife in audio and video. Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa built Talking Sopranos around episode rewatches and interviews. Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler have spoken together from the perspective of the actors who played Tony’s children. More recently, cast reunions have also become part of projects such as the UnderGround Zero mob-drama podcast.

Dominic & Junior occupies a different corner. It is not organized principally around rewatching all 86 episodes, and Chianese is not presenting himself only as a former cast member. The series places The Sopranos inside a longer life that includes the Bronx, folk music, theater, Coppola, Sidney Lumet, HBO and the experience of returning to New York after years in England.

That wider lens may be the show’s strongest asset. Fans already know the lines. They can revisit Junior’s insults, his feuds with Tony and his final institutional scene whenever they want. What a podcast can preserve is the process around those images: how an actor thinks about discipline, remembers collaborators and understands a role after audiences have carried it for nearly three decades.

What comes next for Dominic Chianese’s podcast

The premiere is available on Chianese’s official YouTube channel, and the podcast is also listed on major audio platforms. The hosts have said that later episodes will welcome fellow Sopranos colleagues, although no complete guest schedule was announced with the launch. That distinction is important: cast appearances are part of the plan, not a reason to invent a reunion lineup before it exists.

Chianese’s stated legacy is less about a single character than the discipline required to make art. That is a fitting theme for an actor whose breakthrough arrived late, whose most famous performance mixed comedy with decline, and who is beginning a new format at 95 rather than treating his career as a closed archive.

For MobstersDaily readers, Dominic & Junior offers something valuable: a primary source who can still complicate the familiar story. The podcast will inevitably return to Uncle Junior, James Gandolfini and David Chase, but its real promise is to show the life that existed before Corrado Soprano—and the working artist who remains after him.

Sources

• Dominic Chianese — “Uncle Junior on James Gandolfini, The Sopranos & 70 Years of Acting”
• People — Dominic Chianese on launching the podcast at 95
• Apple Podcasts — official Dominic & Junior listing
• Television Academy — Dominic Chianese awards and nominations
• HBO — Corrado “Junior” Soprano character guide