(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

If you ever wondered why the great series, "The Sopranos," wasn't just a great series, but what everyone was wearing, James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, the great Steven Van Zandt, "Sylvio Dante," what they wore mattered and what they wore was put together by costume designer for, "The Sopranos."

Juliet Polcsa, Juliet, it's so great to have you with us.

How you doing?

- I'm great, thank you for having me.

- Juliet, first of all, how the heck, Where'd you grow up, first of all?

- I grew up outside Boston and came to New York City to go to school, and right after graduation I moved to Hoboken.

- How did you get hooked up with, "The Sopranos?"

- Oh, had known one of the producers for many, many years.

And at the time I was kind, started in theater, and I was starting a film career doing independent film, which was kind of a big thing then.

And she had called me to interview for this TV show, which I didn't really wanna do.

At that time, TV wasn't thought of how it is today.

TV was more of kind of like the second cousin.

But she was always great and she was very supportive of me, so I agreed to do the interview and had an interview with David Chase and got the job.

And I thought, okay, well this is my first time ever doing TV, so pretty much a pretty unique experience.

- Why'd you quit after the first year?

- Because I had never done TV before.

I had only done independent film, which is everything was much smaller scale and I was understaffed, I didn't know it.

So I was really working huge amount of hours per day, working weekends and just having a nervous breakdown just to be able to get everything done that needed to be and I just couldn't keep up the pace anymore.

I wasn't used to it.

And at that point I had the show up and designed, all the characters had closets and basically I was an idiot, I didn't know, I thought I was doing something for my own wellbeing and it was very amicable, it was no problem.

And then the show aired and it became this huge hit, and I thought, well, I really am an idiot.

(both laughing) - How'd they get you back?

I heard that they wanted you, some of the cast members wanted you and they got you back.

- Yeah, to my surprise, I mean, I thought once you quit, that's it.

And one of our producers came back to me and he said, "We want you back."

And then I thought, oh God, now I know what I'm going into.

And it's a different pace, it's very stressful and I thought, oh God, like, do I wanna go back to this?

But on the same hand, I really loved the show and I loved the cast and everything about it.

And I went back and forth and I couldn't decide what to do and I thought, oh, if decision isn't automatic, then I should say no.

So I said, no, again, like an idiot.

And much to my surprise, the producer said, "Well, we don't accept that as an answer."

And apparently the cast had asked him to get her back, which was very heartening to me, so I said yes and it gave me a little bit more bargaining power.

I got a little bit more help that I needed, which kind of made it all doable.

And then I was very grateful and I stayed to the very end.

- Juliet, it is the corniest thing in the world, but I'm about to say it anyway.

Did they make you an offer that you- (Juliet laughing) No, I can't do it, I'm sorry, nevermind, nevermind.

Okay, let's go through this.

I'm fascinated, by the way, go on our website and the great Jacqui Tricarico, my colleague, we did a half hour feature at the New Jersey Hall of Fame that honored and recognized inductee David Chase and we interviewed the entire cast of, "The Sopranos."

And I'm gonna go through some of the cast members and I want you to talk to me first, the great late James Gandolfini.

What was it like to put him in what he was wearing?

Northern New Jersey, mob stuff, "Italian American," nothing you grew up around, I imagine, I know you're in Boston, but Boston's not New Jersey, no disrespect, Yankees are the Yankees, Red Sox the Red Sox, that's not really relevant.

How the heck did you capture Gandolfini and what he needed to be wearing in all those different kinds of scenes?

- Well, the biggest thing with Jim is that he needed to be comfortable.

So I never wanna do anything that restricted him or made him feel, 'cause he's such an intense actor and any small thing can just take him out of it and I didn't want my work to interfere with that at all.

So comfort was a big factor, hence those short sleeve print button down shirts, they were comfortable.

He also liked these prints because he always felt like he's a sad clown, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

And when I was doing my research and kind of figuring out what the rest of this crew was looking like, it was important that he didn't mimic that.

He had to kind of stand out from that a little bit.

But at the same time, the show was not just a mob show, it was a family show, and he was a husband and a father and a suburban dad and he still had to kind of walk all those paths and fill all these different roles.

So there had to be something fairly accessible about what he was wearing.

Yet at the same time, he had to look different than his cohorts and have a certain stature.

- Speaking of the cohorts, I'm gonna talk about Edie Falcon in a second, who, again, we had a great interview with her on the red carpet at New Jersey Performing Arts Center for the New Jersey Hall of Fame induction Ceremony for David Chase.

I'll talk about her in a minute, but go to the cast.

Steven Van Zandt, honored to do a great interview with him, check it on our website.

Sylvio Dante plays the Consigliere.

He had a certain look that was totally different from Gandolfini's.

- And a lot of that came from Stevie.

Stevie comes from music and entertainment was a little bit, and Stevie's personal style is a lot more colorful and wild.

And so we wanted to try to pull some of that into Sylvio Dante.

And we looked to, The movie "Casino".

and the way that Robert De Niro was dressed, he had a lot of color to him, so that gave us a little bit of a pass, a little bit of a template and then we just kind of took it and ran with it a little bit.

- Dare I push you a little bit on Paulie Walnuts?

(Juliet laughing) Who, the actor, away, I mean, what an interesting guy.

Let me ask you this, the gray on the side, was that really his hair?

- Absolutely and he did his own hair.

- He did his own hair?

- He did his own hair.

He wouldn't let anybody touch it, it was very sacrosanct, his hair.

He would get up hours before he had to come to set.

- Stop, Juliet, this can't be true.

- Just to do his own hair, yeah.

- So the hair people did not touch his hair?

- They might, I mean, I wasn't in the hair trailer, I mean, they might have attempted to, but he was very, you know... - Got it, by the way, we're talking about the great Tony Sirico.

Can we do this?

Edie Falco and also Adriana, I wanna get to in a second, who's talked a lot about how extraordinarily you dressed her and how that looked in many ways, in many places, sustains today and just know that I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in the northern section of the city, virtually all Italian American and let's just say there were folks in the neighborhood, we knew who they were, you didn't talk to them and they dressed a certain way and we never really knew what they did for a living.

That being said, Edie Falco, a northern New Jersey, Italian American mother, wife or mob wife, both?

- Probably both, yeah.

- So then, was it a pants suit?

What was going on there?

Very rarely wore a dress.

- No, she didn't wear a dress.

Because at that point, to me, I remember, I had a girlfriend, a coworker.

She grew up in New Jersey with an Italian mother and her mother never wore pants and to me that seemed a little dated.

Olivia never wore pants.

- The mother?

- The mother.

- Nancy Marchand, passed away after the first year.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, so Edie, like, I looked at myself, I very rarely wore dresses.

So pants just seemed to be, when she got dressed up, she would wear dresses and skirts and things like that, but her everyday was pants as a lot of women did, it just seemed normal.

She had a very, let's say, color coordinated outfit-ey type of look to her, that was of the time.

There was a store that I found in the malls in New Jersey called Cache, and I walked in there and I just thought, oh my God, this is it.

This is where this woman would shop.

- Which mall?

Hold on.

(Juliet laughing) - Well, I have to say the Garden State Plaza was my kind of home base, but- - At Willlowbrook county.

- Yeah, Willowbrook was also a big favorite of mine and Short Hills, we basically hit them all.

- Okay, so Adriana.

Michael Imperioli, again, wonderful interview with him, out of Lincoln Center, the WNET studio.

Check that out on our website.

But his girlfriend, wife, he did marry Adriana, I don't even remember, that look, she was sexy in a certain way, but help us understand that look.

- When she started out, she was such a minor character.

She was like a hostess in a restaurant.

- Vesuvio, she was a hostess in Vesuvio, I think.

- Exactly and they gradually kind of wrote more for her and the more they wrote and the more where you got an idea of kind of who she was and then there was the actress, a lot of the characters, we took pieces of who the actors were and incorporated some of that into their character.

Not all, but some.

But Drea herself has a very sexy way about her and she kind of took that with Adriana and kind of ran with it.

Drea is more kind of rock and roll, which Adriana was not, but when she took over the Crazy Horse and was kind of managing that, it gave a little more of a platform, should I say, for some outfits that I guess became memorable.

But she was some of the things I couldn't do with Carmela, because Carmela was like a mom and you didn't wanna kind of see that in a mom.

Adriana was just completely unabashed and I could do all that sexy stuff with her.

- Juliet was a costume designer of "The Sopranos."

She helped make this show the iconic TV experience that it continues to be.

Juliet, I can't thank you enough for joining us, we appreciate it.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Oh yeah, my team wants to ask, what happened to all the clothes after the show ended?

- Well, they all kind of flew into different directions, different people's closets, but there was a big bulk of them that were curated and they're at Warner Brothers as an archive in California.

And so, a lot of them are in storage there.

- Great question, team, even better response.

Juliet, thanks so much, we appreciate it.

- Thanks very much, bye-bye.

- We'll be right back.

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