Although he’s best known today for playing Frank Costanza and Arthur Spooner on comedy shows like Seinfeld and The King of Queens, Jerry Stiller was a classically trained actor with a number of dramatic roles to his name. In 1974, he made his earliest credited film appearance in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and years later, he showed up on several TV crime dramas, including Law & Order, L.A. Law, and Homicide: Life on the Street. Stiller was also set to appear in a pilot for another famous drama series in 1997, and it would’ve been a noteworthy addition to his filmography. For some reason, he opted to go for a different job instead.
According to Georgianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, who were the casting directors for the HBO series The Sopranos, Stiller had actually been cast as Tony Soprano’s advisor, Herman “Hesh” Rabkin. During an episode of Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa’s Talking Sopranos podcast, it was revealed that the pilot for the show was scheduled to be shot with Stiller, but at the last minute, he accepted an offer to be in a commercial and was no longer available. Jaffe implied that Stiller got a lot of money for his decision, and since the Sopranos crew weren’t paid much for the first episode, that might explain why he backed out unexpectedly. Imperioli, who played Tony’s nephew Christopher Moltisanti on the show, admitted that he didn’t have high hopes from reading the script himself.
In the end, they all agreed that the show was better off that way. “I can’t even picture that,” said Schirripa. “I can’t see anyone being Hesh except for Hesh.” Jerry Adler ended up getting the role and appeared in 28 out of the 86 episodes of the series. In Jaffe’s opinion, everything “worked out for the best.” Walken agreed with the sentiment, calling the result “perfect.”
It was still a rough thing to deal with at the time, however, because Stiller jumping ship like that left them just a single weekend to find his replacement. In a panic, Jaffe called up Adler’s daughter, Alina, who also happened to be a talent agent, and asked her where her father was. Luckily for them, he was in New York, and they were shooting nearby, so they hired him immediately.
The Sopranos debuted in 1999 and has consistently appeared on lists of the greatest TV shows of all time since then, often ranking in the top ten alongside Seinfeld.
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