Lorraine Bracco has not starred in too many projects fit for her grandchildren to watch. Goodfellas definitely isn’t kid-friendly. Neither is The Sopranos. Even Rizzoli & Isles is too violent for kiddos. With Netflix’s recent PG-rated comedy Nonnas, however, there’s finally an option for the entire Bracco family.
“I’m so thrilled that they’ll be able to see this movie,” she tells Parade while chatting in our New York studio. “Because I have made a lot of movies that they cannot watch until they’re much older, so this is fun for me.”
Nonnas, which is now streaming, is based on the true story of the founding of the Staten Island restaurant Enoteca Maria. Joe Scaravella, played by Vince Vaughn in the film, quit his job at the MTA to open the restaurant after his the passing of his mother and grandmother. Only, rather than hiring professional chefs, Scaravella hired nonnas (that’s Italian for “grandmothers.”) In the film, Bracco plays Roberta, who she describes as “made up of a bunch of [real life] nonnas.” Roberta, who was the best friend of Scarvalla’s mother in the movie, is a reluctant hire, but quickly falls in love with the restaurant and cooking with the other nonnas.
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Bracco is now a grandmother herself and loving it. “Running after three little kids is always a lot of fun,” she says. “Picking up a lot of things. I was laughing because when I would go to my daughter’s, I would be picking up things, and I would yell, ‘Bending! Bending!’ Then the little one would hear, she would yell out, ‘Bending! Bending!’ We got a big laugh with her. The kids are incredible.”
Her grandchildren are only vaguely aware that they’re related to an Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress. “They know I’m in the movies because people will talk to me, and they know I’m on TV because we did the show for HGTV for the Italian house. They saw that.” Aside from the star HGTV’s My Big Italian Adventure, Bracco is just a nonna to her grandchildren, although she hasn’t taken on that moniker in real life.
“They call me ‘Flower,'” she says about her grandmother nickname. “I picked that. When I was a kid and saw Bambi, Bambi meets the skunk and says, ‘What’s your name?’ and the skunk goes, ‘Flower.’ I always just loved that, because of the juxtaposition of the skunk and the name.”
In the film, Bracco is joined by Susan Sarandon, Talia Shire and Brenda Vaccaro in the kitchen. However, she’s not sure if any of the movie’s nonnas actually go by “Nonna.”
“Maybe Talia?” she says. “Susan Sarandon’s grandchildren call her ‘Honey,’ which is adorable.”
While Bracco had met Sarandon and Vaccaro before, she only met Shire on set. While their characters are at odds from the start, Bracco says the women got along instantly on set. “Great fun. Great stories,” she says. “We’re all full of it, which was a lot of fun.”
She remembers filming a particular beauty parlor sequence where the women finally share their life stories with one another as “very moving.”
“I think we all had a story to tell,” she says, “And the way Stephen [Chbosky, the director] set it up and the way he filmed it and edited it came out really beautiful, because it really was the glue of all of us.”
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One thing that bonded the cast together was devouring all the prop food on set.
“We had a fabulous chef, Jason [Forella], who prepared all the food that you see in the movie. The big problem was before the food would even get to the table, we would be eating everything, and he would look at us and go, ‘Guys, now I gotta go back to the kitchen and make more food.’ After a couple of days, he would wait to put any of the dishes out until the cameras were rolling.
Filming Nonnas for Bracco required mixing skill sets she already possessed in real life with some brand-new ones. Her character is Sicilian, and Bracco owns a home there. Her character is a great cook, and so is Bracco. She cites ravioli, steak and biscotti as some of her signature dishes. However, Bracco had to learn some Italian for the film. “I’m fluent in French,” she says. “I know just curse words in Italian.”
Perhaps most daunting, however, was that Nonnas is a comedy and Bracco is known primarily for her dramatic acting chops.
“I remember saying to Vince and to Steven, ‘I think you really cast the wrong person. I’m not a comedian. I don’t know how to do this,” she recalls from the beginning of the shoot. “And they were like, ‘Just breathe. You’re doing great. Trust yourself. We love you.’ They were just incredibly supportive of me.”
Looking back, she describes the experience as “freeing.” “I loved that Stephen Chbosky and Vince Vaughn were very supportive of my choices. Even though I was insecure, they were pushing me, [saying] ‘It’s good, it’s good. Don’t worry. Do it. Do it. Do it.”
Bracco says the set was such a welcoming environment that the cast would improv with each other in addition to working off of Liz Maccie‘s script. She especially enjoyed a food fight scene she filmed with Vaccaro. “How many times do you get to have a really good food fight and not have to clean up?” she says.
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Bracco’s humor in the film is effortless. And in the half hour I spent with her, it’s evident that she’s a naturally funny human. She and The Sopranos star James Gandolfini used to prank each other on set. “He was naughty and I was naughty, and it was fun,” she says of their whoopee cushion war.
Nonnas is a bit of a Sopranos reunion as Drea de Matteo also appears in the film. However, Bracco is quick to point out that they didn’t have any scenes together on the HBO hit, and they don’t really have any scenes together in Nonnas either.
Last year marked the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos‘ premiere, and Bracco is still a bit shocked by how often new, young fans approach her, especially post-pandemic. “It’s crazy. I was really surprised,” she says. “It’s like, ‘I remember my parents watching it, and I wasn’t allowed to watch it, and then during the pandemic, they let me watch it.’ I guess it was a good time to pass 80 hours of television.”
To celebrate the 25th anniversary, HBO released a two-part docuseries fromAlex Gibney entitled Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos. Since Bracco’s therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, typically only had scenes with Gandolfini. She says she “learned a lot from that documentary” about the show she was a star on.
While Bracco faced off against the likes of Tony Soprano with ease, Nonnas did bring her face to face with a potentially more terrifying adversary: capuzzelle, a Sicilian dish made out of sheep’s head. Despite being her character’s signature dish in the film (and an actual menu item at Enoteca Maria), Bracco responded with a harsh “no” when asked if she’d tried any on set before bursting into laughter.
Nonnas is now streaming on Netflix.
