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AE: So, you've come a long way from Brooklyn.
JG: Yeah, yeah.

AE: At one point you considered becoming a lawyer, and then you got interested in the food business, became a food fence, a gambler …
JG: Right. While I was a chef, someone asked me to be in a play. I liked it, I studied, but then I started being broke. So I got back into restaurants, and then I started opening restaurants. Then, I gambled and I lost everything. I lost $60,000 one Sunday back in 1990.

AE: Yikes!
JG: Yeah. So I cashed out the restaurant and said ‘I'm going to LA, I can't do this no more.' … But you know what? It all worked out for the best.

AE: Sure did. You took a character that was fairly minor and turned him into a gay sensation.
JG: Gandolfini said I was the smartest guy in show biz.

AE: You must have taken some guff from the other cast members when Vito's storyline was revealed. Did the guys let you have it? What about the women on the show? What were some of their reactions?
JG: It was good. And most of the guys were good, too. It was all good-natured. They all said I had balls, that they couldn't do what I'm doing—that they wouldn't do it. But most of them, they took their hats off … As an actor you want to play someone challenging, someone opposite of who you are. And I wanted to break away from the other actors.

AE: The word “bravery” has been thrown about lately with regard to straight actors who play gay roles. And, to be honest, I'm tired of hearing it. You guys are actors. In my eyes, you're not being brave—you're doing your job. Yet on the business end of things, playing gay is viewed as a risky step to take—especially for male actors. Are actors and agents getting any closer to realizing that they're buying into and supporting homophobia when they turn down gay roles?
JG: Well, you know what? Those actors — who knows if they're on the fence, if they're fighting the gay, fighting the fag, as they say. Maybe they're not, maybe they are. I don't even think about it. I said, ‘How am I going to break out from being the background guy and say a few more lines here and there?' It's an acting job.

AE: So, you have no regrets?
JG: No, not at all. Listen, I would have sucked c*** a long time ago if I knew this was going to happen.
[Laughter]

AE: When you were growing up in Brooklyn, did you know any gay Italian men?
JG: Oh yeah! I knew some. It didn't really faze me. You know, I worked in gay restaurants as a chef, cooking through the ranks. I got a job and a chef brought me along, and it was a total gay restaurant. We were friends and we'd meet afterward, have a drink at the bar. I thought, ‘What the fuck, man? What's the big fucking deal?' They're all great guys.

AE: I read in another interview you did that some of the extras in the gay bar scene where you were outed are actual gay men that were recruited to the set right out of gay clubs. In that interview, you said, “It was pretty funny, watching the Teamsters interact with those guys.”
JG: Yeah, [casting] patronized some leather bars in New York and got all these guys to show up. It was pretty funny. A lot of shit was going on, and I don't even know if they had liquor there. But that kiss at the end, I did on my own.

AE: I'm glad you bring that up because, as a longtime fan of the show, I've wondered how open the directors are to the actors' input—especially when directors are actors. The kiss, for example.
JG: You know what? [Steve] Buscemi, who directed that, said that you gotta do what it takes. And I knew what he meant by that. To sell it, you gotta do what gays do, what people do. So in the scene, I'm hanging out with the guy, I was dancing with him, and picking him up. I've, you know, done that with girls.

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