‘American Dad!’ Is Michael Imperioli’s Favorite Show — ‘By Far, Actually’
Christopher Moltisanti would never squeal to the FBI, but he might entertain a meeting with the CIA if invited by Stan Smith.
Michael Imperioli is best known for his Emmy-winning performance as the aforementioned capo nephew to the don in The Sopranos, but the New York-born actor is much more of a renaissance man than his most famous character — Imperioli is an accomplished screenwriter who wrote five episodes of the flagship HBO series and co-wrote the 1999 Spike Lee film Summer of Sam. He is a crafty and capable chef, having won 2014 Tournament of Stars competition of Chopped. He’s a rock music vocalist. He’s a theater director. He is a practicing Buddhist. Oh, and he’s an American Dad! superfan who holds no TV series above it — with absolutely no apologies to David Chase.
Earlier this year, Imperioli appeared in Architectural Digest’s “Open Door” series, where he showed off his spacious, luxurious Manhattan condominium, replete with Greco-Roman molding, custom guitars and a vintage book library filled with volumes from thinkers ranging from Gabriel García Márquez to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. At around the 6:15 mark, Imperioli removes the tasteful folding screen blocking his bedroom television to reveal a much larger surprise than a garish black idiot box inhabiting a room of gold: American Dad! is his absolute favorite show.
There seems to be a trend of so-called “serious” artists finding themselves attracted to absolute silliness — Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan recently revealed that the number one movie he can never turn off when it’s on TV is Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. In Imperioli’s case, it’s no surprise that the White Lotus star is attracted to a series with such a heavy focus on the family unit, even though that family contains a hyper-nationalist CIA agent, a pansexual alien and an East German Olympian trapped in the body of a talking goldfish.
It’s unclear if Seth MacFarlane is aware of the fact that one of the biggest stars from one of the biggest TV shows in history is a die-hard fan of his second most popular project, but he might have had an inkling that someone on the set of The Sopranos was a fan when the series ended with an abrupt cutaway gag to the credits.
