Steve Schirripa apparently has the NYPD’s unofficial seal of approval!
The Sopranos actor, 67, spoke exclusively with about his time on the CBS crime drama Blue Bloods, which ended on Dec. 13 after 14 seasons. While he was used to playing tough guys, Schirripa — who joined the cast as a series regular in season 6 as detective Anthony Abetemarco — admitted he knew nothing about “cop stuff” when he took the role.
“How to handcuff someone, how to flash your badge, all that stuff, there’s a technical advisor, James Nuciforo, who taught me all of that,” he says, adding that he also had to “learn a whole lot of cop terms and lingo.”
The work apparently paid off, as Schirripa shares that actual police officers stop him in the streets of New York City to tell him he’s “1,000%” believable in the role and that they “worked with guys just like you.”
“That made me happy. That it was authentic, that [there] are cops and old-school blue-collar cops like Anthony [Abetemarco],” he says. “He was a good character, you know?”
Schirripa also reflected on his almost decade-long run on the show, noting that he was initially only cast for a one- or two-episode arc.
“I did two episodes and the showrunners said, ‘Would you like to do more?’ And I said, ‘I’d love to.’ I stuck around, and they wrote some great stuff for me,” he explains.
He applauded the cast, which included Tom Selleck, Bridget Moynahan, Donnie Wahlberg, Will Estes and Len Cariou as the Reagan family.
“It was a very close-knit group, really, a nice group of people,” he says. “I didn’t know anyone. So it’s strange when you’re stepping in and everyone knows each other, and you’re like the new guy. But they treated me like one of them from day one.”
Schirripa also revealed he got an invite to one of the “Reagan family dinners,” which the actors held every Sunday during filming.
“That was a very big honor to be invited to family dinner on Blue Bloods, and I enjoyed that,” he recalls. “I was there once. I made it. They ate Italian food that day, so it was good. The Reagans ate Italian food.”
The Secret Life of the American Teenager actor also shared that one on-set highlight was when the writers wrote a role for his beloved dog Willie — a newly-minted Freshpet commercial star.
“They wrote him into an episode, and they gave him a director’s chair, and he played an emotional support dog in episode 11 of this past season, and they treated him like a king on set. That was a lot of fun,” he adds.
And while Schirripa says he’s still unsure why the series didn’t get renewed despite the fact that the “ratings were good,” he tells that it was a “wonderful run” and “really terrific on every level.”
