Unpacking Ralph Cifaretto’s ‘Gladiator’ Obsession on ‘The Sopranos’

In season three, episode six of The Sopranos, Tony and Carmela Soprano are hosting their usual Sunday lunch. But the vibes are off, thanks to Ralph Cifaretto. He’s hijacked the conversation, forcing everyone to listen to him prattle on in excruciating detail about the movie Gladiator.

“So Russell Crowe, he’s trapped, right?” Ralphie says. “They’re going to sever his head. And he’s telling them how to do it.”

The camera pans to the rest of the table looking bored or uncomfortable, save for teenage A.J. Soprano. “And then he yanks the sword from that dude,” A.J. jumps in. “That was so phat.”

Ralphie, played by Joe Pantoliano, is introduced as a soldier in season three of the series, and almost immediately starts getting on everyone’s nerves. In a show about ruthless mobsters, Ralphie stuck out for his potent combination of being both a psychopath and incredibly annoying. But dude was also very, very into Gladiator.

For instance: In the fourth episode of season three, he saunters up to Tony and the guys during a party at Johnny Sack’s house, opening with, “Gentlemen, what we do in life…echoes in eternity.” Silvio shakes his head: “He’s fuckin’ obsessed with Gladiator.”

“Strength. And honor,” Ralph counters, pounding his chest. “Scotch. And soda,” Tony replies, busting his balls. In the very next episode, when Ralph starts quoting Gladiator during dinner at Artie Bucco’s restaurant, Paulie Walnuts groans, “Here we go!”

Then we get to season three, episode six, “University.” Widely remembered for the shockingly violent scene in which Ralphie murders his dancer girlfriend Tracee, the episode also features that painful Sunday lunch at Tony’s. A few scenes later, Ralphie is swinging around a chain, quoting the film and ends up taking out the eye of a Bada Bing bouncer. He also watches Spartacus, on the recommendation of resident mafioso film buff Christopher Moltisanti, but finds it not to his liking: “This Moltisanti kid’s got his head up his ass. This is a great gladiator movie? Look at Kirk Douglas’s fuckin’ hair—they didn’t have flat tops in ancient Rome!”

As the X user Brooks Otterlake pointed out: “Ralph Cifaretto's obsession with Gladiator is especially funny because he was introduced as a character less than a year after the movie came out. It's like if the last season of Succession had added a new guy who's constantly quoting Tenet.” (It also strikes me that the way Ralphie talks about Gladiator is kind of the way film enthusiasts talk all the time now.)

Gladiator was released in May 2000. By the time these episodes aired, Ridley Scott’s epic starring Russell Crowe as Maximus, a Roman general captured and forced into being a gladiator, had grossed upwards of $400 million worldwide. The movie was a full-fledged cultural phenomenon; it won Best Picture, Best Actor, and a handful of other awards at that year’s Oscars right around the time these Sopranos episodes aired. (Meanwhile, the Academy Awards took a ratings hit that year by airing against The Sopranos on a Sunday night.)

As longtime Sopranos writer and executive producer Terence Winter told me, it was the writers' own enthusiasm and love for Gladiator that made them want to insert into the show in some way. “I am going to guess that we were probably just talking about in the writer's room as fans ourselves,” he said. “I don't know who pitched, ‘It would be funny if Ralph was obsessed with it.’ The more we talked about it, the more it made sense.”

“And then it was, rather than just say we loved it, let's turn it on its head and just make it something goofy that Ralph is the one who loves it. The other guys like it, but they’re not obsessed with it,” Winter added.

The Sopranos was an extended rumination on masculinity, with characters perpetually idealizing bygone modes of manliness—think of Tony’s yearning for Gary Cooper, the strong, silent type. Gladiator, too, portrayed a notion of manhood rooted in strength, honor, and duty, albeit 2,000 years prior. But it was Ralphie, arguably one of the worst men on the show (and a strong contender for the worst) who was the most obsessed with it, and also most woefully misinterpreted its messages.

Winter pointed out that all the Sopranos guys tended to romanticize ancient Rome in general. ”They think of themselves as the descendants of these guys. They don't see themselves as criminals,” Winter said, mentioning an early episode in which someone asks Tony, “Where are the Romans now?” and he replies, “You’re looking at ‘em.”

While that may have all been wishful thinking, it checks out that Ralphie is the most outwardly delusional about this. “The violence is obviously attractive,” Winter said. “You're living in a time and place where things are settled by bloodshed and there's no real law. And Ralphie is trying to see himself as this hero.”

Ralph’s latent homosexuality, hinted at often, may have been another undercurrent to his attraction to Gladiator. “There is something homoerotic about Gladiator,” Winter said. “Ralphie was a guy who was probably questioning his own sexuality, and I'm sure Ralphie, the character, would kill me for even suggesting this, but I am sure there was more than a little bit of it that was seeing these big, muscular, sweaty guys fighting each other. There's something attractive about that to Ralph.” (As our friends at British GQ have pointed out, Gladiator II is also “kinda gay.”)

Joe Pantoliano, who portrayed Ralphie, theorized to me that Ralphie saw himself as Maximus. “I think it was the underdog quality,” Pantoliano said. “The idea that somebody is put in an unattainable situation, that the odds are against them, there's no way that they're going to be able to survive. But through Maximus’s wit and strengths and friendship … I think Ralph definitely saw himself as the hero.”

Pantoliano also remembered running into Russell Crowe at some black tie event during Oscars season that year. “I said, ‘We're doing a whole thing about my character’s just crazy about the Gladiator. Russell Crowe then said to me [Pantoliano puts on an Australian accent] ‘Joey Pants, how are you doing, mate? You don't remember me? We were at the Raincheck Bar putting a piss on years ago when we were nobody.’”

Eventually, after an unimpeachable run of mayhem, Ralphie is finally murdered by Tony. Ralphie gets it in his own kitchen and it’s not a clean hit. The two wrestle and fight dirty. There are frying pans and Raid roach spray involved. Pantoliano saw the scene as inherently gladiatorial in nature: “It was never discussed with me, but it’s obvious.” Winter didn’t recall if it was intentional to have Ralphie die a gladiator’s death (and Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, who wrote that episode, didn’t comment), but can see the echo now.

In season six, long after Ralphie is dispatched to mobster Elysium, his name comes up in conversation again, when Paulie Walnuts remembers his chain-swinging antics and “his Gladiator fixation.” Guess what we do in life really does echo in eternity.