What Drea De Matteo Has Been Up To Since The Sopranos Ended
Fiery actress Drea de Matteo made an impact as the just-as-fiery Adriana La Cerva during her 1999-2006 run on The Sopranos. Adriana was Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli)'s girlfriend and eventual fiancée, and that put her in a position to become a perfect stool pigeon for the FBI when they tried to slap together a case against Christopher and take down the entire Soprano family racket. Adriana was killed off at the hands of Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt) in 2006 for working with the Feds, just around the same time as the work de Matteo was doing on another series with a major network began.
De Matteo was a journeywoman actress before being cast as Adriana, and she continued a solid string of guest shots and recurring roles after the show wrapped. In fact, fans of a popular current drama might recognize her face. What's she up to now? Read on to find out.
Drea de Matteo has played a biker's wife, a police officer, and so much more
Drea de Matteo jumped right from The Sopranos into another high-profile project – from 2004 to 2006, she was a co-star on the Friends spin-off series Joey, portraying the titular character's sister, Gina Tribbiani. Joey was canceled in 2006, which led de Matteo to a wide variety of recurring TV roles. Since then, she's had guest-starring roles on Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, CSI: Miami, Californication, The Mindy Project, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
She had a recurring role on Desperate Housewives for a season as Angie Bolen, and made 35 appearances during all seven seasons of the FX biker drama Sons of Anarchy, playing Wendy Case, the drug-addicted ex-wife of Jax Teller and mother of his son Abel. She co-starred as Tess Nazario in the Jennifer Lopez police procedural Shades of Blue for two seasons and played Barbara Nelson for eight episodes in the first season of the popular ABC drama A Million Little Things.
Her current project rocks out
As of 2021, de Matteo portrays booking agent Maya in the Amazon Prime series Paradise City, a drama about the world of rock music that debuted on March 25. In an Audible.com interview (via Omny.fm), she described the process of making the show as a "long shot."
"It started out with a guy who just wanted to make a TV Show, he had no studio, he had no network attached to it, it's just a guy and his dream," she explained. "He [Ash Avildsen, Paradise City's creator, writer, producer, and director] put together this crazy mix of characters. Between influencers and rock stars and actors from Sons of Anarchy and Disney stars, and it was just like this chaotic match of rock & roll."
No announcement has been made regarding the show's renewal as of press time. It is one of the last projects worked on by Cameron Boyce, who passed away from epilepsy in 2019, according to NBC News.
Drea de Matteo is still connected to her Sopranos roots
De Matteo continues to keep a toe in the Sopranos world, having launched Gangster Goddess: Broad-Cast – a Sopranos rewatch podcast — during quarantine in 2020. She also maintains a Cameo account, for fans who would like to have personalized greetings from the actress.
Adriana clearly still continues to be a big part of her life. She recently said that people she meets on the street still ask her to say "Christopher" in a heavy New York accent — a familiar catchphrase of her character on the show. However, she also admitted that it was hard to say the name back in the day. "I felt like my accent sounded so forced and I hated saying it. So I went to David Chase and I said: 'I can't say Christopher like that all the time, can I call him Chrissy?' If you notice throughout the series I pepper it with Chrissy and Christopher," she told NME.