Before The Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999, Chris Rock was one of the biggest names associated with the premium cable network. His 1996 stand-up special, Bring the Pain, launched him into superstardom and established him as one of the top comedians in the business. Following the special’s success, HBO gave Rock his own late-night variety series, The Chris Rock Show, which ran for five seasons between 1997 and 2000. It should come as no surprise, then, that when The Sopranos became a huge success itself a little while later, the comedian was being considered as a potential guest star.
During a roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, Rock revealed that he was actually courted more than once to appear alongside James Gandolfini in the hit HBO crime drama. However, as he explained, “sometimes you can respect something so much, you don’t even want to be a part of it.”
“Years ago, when I had my own show on HBO, it was at the height of The Sopranos,” Rock continued. “I got a couple offers to be on The Sopranos, and I was like, ‘I like it too much, I don’t want to spoil it.’”
It’s unclear what role (or roles) Rock was being tapped to play, but clearly, he had made up his mind about not doing it regardless of that. Apparently, he changed his tune about ruining things he likes by the time he was offered a gangster role on the FX anthology series, Fargo, years later. Rock was such a big fan of the show that when showrunner Noah Hawley reached out to him about joining the cast in Season 4, he accepted the part immediately. Interestingly, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly from 2020, Rock described his character on the show, Loy Cannon, as being “Tony Soprano-esque.”
Despite declining to appear on The Sopranos, Rock remains linked to the series in a couple of other ways. In 2025, footage surfaced of a previously unseen 2010 recruitment video in which several prominent celebrities tried to persuade LeBron James to join the New York Knicks. Among the famous faces that showed up in the video were Rock and Sopranos stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, who reprised their roles as Tony and Carmela for the only time after the show’s 2007 finale. And speaking of finales, it’s also worth pointing out that the final scene from Rock’s sitcom, Everybody Hates Chris, was a parody of the controversial Sopranos ending:
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