Chris Diamantopoulos Reveals Late Sopranos Star Tony Sirico Accidentally Hit Him with a Real Pipe (Exclusive)

Sticky star Chris Diamantopoulos got real The Soprano family treatment when he was a guest on the show.

Diamantopoulos spoke with PEOPLE about his new Prime Video series and his career in Hollywood, with more than 120 credits including a guest appearance on the hit HBO series The Soprano family.

The now 49-year-old actor appeared in the fourth episode of the final season, “The Fleshy Part of the Thigh.” He played Jason Barone, a New Jersey native grieving the loss of his father, who secretly worked with Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri (Tony Sirico), unaware of his father’s mob connections, he disobeys Tony’s family friend’s request and he quickly meets the consequences: a beating from Paulie.

Diamantopoulos shared his memories of working with the late actors and the impressions they left on him. Gandolfini died in June 2013 at the age of 51. Sirico died in July 2022; he was 79 years old.

Although “it was a rite of passage to get hit by Paulie Walnuts,” says Diamantopoulos, the scene didn’t go according to plan.

“Sirico had two pipes, a lead pipe and a rubber pipe, one he used when the camera was on me and the other when the camera was on him,” he says. “Which one do you think he used on me the first time?”

“The answer is that it wasn’t fake,” he says, joking that he “got punched by Paulie Walnuts and lived to tell about it.”

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Tony Sirico and Chris Diamantopoulos in “The Sopranos.”

HBO

Diamantopoulos, also known for his work in Office and Silicon Valleyhe was thrilled to be filming with Gandolfini.

“I remember doing a scene with him where he was in the hospital. His character had to have stabbing pains in his stomach,” says Diamantopoulos.

“I remember him out on vacation, looking for a certain stone. He wanted to find a jagged stone, he hid it under a hospital gown and held his hand over it so that the figure caused pain.” Diamantopoulos notes that Gandolfini “shoved his arm down and the rock dug into his gut, which gave him a chance to react.”

“I thought it was a really practical effect,” he says. “A really cool thing to see.”

Chris Diamantopoulos and Tony Sirico in “The Sopranos.”

HBO

Diamantopoulos says he “learned a lot from a lot of the actors he worked with.” But his last character, StickyMike Byrne is a mob guy that audiences haven’t seen that much on TV. “The character that he is on the surface and that he represents when we first see him, is definitely not what he really is,” he says.

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Chris Diamantopoulos in “The Sticky.”.

Jan Thijs

Diamantopoulos stars as mobster Mike, who teams up with maple syrup producer Margo Martindale, Ruth Landry and Guillaume Cyr as security guard Remy Bouchard to pull off a multi-million dollar heist of Quebec’s maple syrup surplus.

“I enjoyed finding the cracks in the character, then breaking them open and exposing what was really there – this scared, insecure, broken loser of a man,” he says.

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Sticky season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.

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Source: HIS Education