When I’m old and gray, I’ll be going, ‘Look, they liked me! They said they liked me!’ Over the past 14 months, Turturro estimates that she has made more than 450 Cameos - roughly one or two per week, though the requests pile up more during the holidays. She admits things have been financially tighter since The Sopranos ended, despite her recurring roles on Law & Order: SVU and The Blacklist, an upcoming stint on What We Do in the Shadows, and the nun role she plays in Call Jane, Phyllis Nagy’s upcoming film about a real-life clandestine abortion group. “Then you realize there are people who are fans, and if it’s something that makes them happy, why not?” The money didn’t hurt either, especially in the pandemic’s early days. And it helped me a lot to put on some lipstick and look at my script.” At first, she was confused by the whole thing. “You needed to feel like you had a job or something to do that day. Turturro was introduced to Cameo just before the pandemic by her Sopranos co-star Jamie-Lynn Sigler ($150) and became curious about it as jobs dried up and the world shut down. In one of my favorite Turturro Cameos, she turns faux solemn and says, “Don’t get shot. I ask Turturro how much planning goes into her Cameos, and she confirms that all she does is write down a few notes: the recipient’s name, the gift giver’s name, any personal details provided. To conclude each video, she launches, cabaret style, into an ad-libbed song, cycling through various accents and characters (Marilyn Monroe, an effusive Italian aunt, and several unidentifiable others) until she skids back into her own body, apologizes (“I’m not a singer”), and blows the recipient a big juicy kiss. Sometimes she free-associates her way into disarmingly personal territory, remarking, for example, that she wishes she had children of her own or that she misses her “mommy and daddy.” She’ll offer bits of wisdom or tell a story about herself that connects to the recipient, even in an incidental way. Regardless, Turturro, who charges $90 a Cameo, is always thrilled to be there, referring to the recipient as “beautiful” despite having never laid eyes on the person, pretending to have received a “call” from the gift giver as if the two were old pals, then launching into an improvised monologue about any number of topics: The Sopranos, mostly, but also other things, such as how she took care of her parents before they died, or how much she loves Ireland, or how riveted she is by Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy. Like most Cameos, Turturro’s are usually purchased as a gift for a birthday, retirement, or graduation, but sometimes they’re meant as a pick-me-up for someone in the throes of addiction recovery or grieving a death. In the early days of COVID-19, Turturro - who is best known for playing Tony’s chaos-agent sister, Janice, on The Sopranos but has had a career of supporting TV and movie roles - joined Cameo, the online service on which you can pay anywhere from $5 to thousands of dollars for a personalized video message from more than 40,000 celebrities, ranging from Caitlyn Jenner ($2,500) to former NFL coach Mike Ditka ($600) to Chewbacca Mom ($50). Lately, Turturro has had a lot of practice giving oddly specific compliments to strangers. ![]() I think you’re one of the powerful ones, right?” “Those Leos … When they’re powerful, they’re powerful. ![]() “You little baby! When’s your birthday?” I tell her it’s in August, and she gasps. It’s all good, babe”), and squints at me again, kindly. She takes a breath, apologizes for her hair (“My hair has to be back because I wear a habit. Now I whiten my teeth, but they’re still not white because the coffee, the coffee, the coffee!” I was never a coffee drinker, but then I went to Italy and got addicted to the espresso, so I got a Nespresso machine and started making it at home. I should have straightened my teeth, but I liked them. “You’re like a new-breed dog with very white teeth,” she declares with glee. We are looking at each other from our laptops - she in Connecticut filming a movie in which she plays a 1960s nun involved with a group that provides black-market abortions, me in my New York bedroom wearing one-half of an outfit. The actress Aida Turturro studies me intently. ![]() Photo: Landon Nordeman for New York Magazine
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |