Topic: Carmela Soprano

Carmela Soprano née DeAngelis, played by Edie Falco, is a fictional character on the HBO TV series The Sopranos. She is the wife of mafia boss Tony Soprano. A remarkably complex character, she is the female lead of the series.

Carmela was Tony Soprano's high school sweetheart and they married at a young age. Carmela is capable, organized and resourceful and puts her family first. Carmela tries to maintain the Soprano household while Tony is out working. At times, she seems to be the stereotypical mob boss's wife: supportive and friendly, even strong at times, while rarely asking about details of her husband's work. Tony has trusted his wife enough to confide in her, to a degree, about some of his Mafia dealings, notably the failed attempt on his life and the death of Richie Aprile. However, the years of having a husband missing at all hours, coupled with his constant infidelity, have put a serious strain on their relationship at times and they even separated for a period. Carmela is also an observant Roman Catholic and has difficulty rationalizing both her husband's profession and her subsequent separation.

While generally understood as good, Carmela's character is a complicated one. She has sometimes sacrificed her children's security for the sake of a few gold watches, but has defended her children when they did something wrong. She has shown herself willing to use her mob-wife status to intimidate others, as she did in "Full Leather Jacket," where she not-too-subtly commanded her neighbor's Georgetown-alumna sister into writing a letter of recommendation for Meadow to Georgetown, so that Meadow would not go to UC Berkeley but stay closer to home. Also, she discarded a letter from Berkeley to Meadow requesting transcripts, but later retrieved it from the trash in a moment of guilt. While she is very proud of Meadow's accomplishments and ambition, she partly resents her for achieving the independence she always wanted. She constantly frets over A.J.'s troubles and inactivity, yet tends to coddle him and is unwilling to impose any real restrictions on him. She has trouble with her husband's profession but still loves him anyway.