Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 410th episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood

Reporter's Awards Podcast.

I'm Scott Feinberg, the host, and also a trustee professor at Chapman University's film

school.

And this is a special live episode being recorded at Chapman's Felino Theatre in Orange,

California, part of the OC.

In front of an audience of my students and other members of the community of this great

film school, which has become even greater under the oversight of my friend and former

THR colleague, Dean Steven Galloway.

Today, we are privileged to be joined by one of the great creative talents of our time.

A writer, director, and producer who created and was the primary force behind the sopranos,

which ran for 86 episodes spanning six seasons between 1999 and 2007, and is widely

regarded as the greatest television show of all time.

The first cable show ever nominated for and also ever to win the Best Drama Series Emmy,

it helped to put HBO on the map, and ushered in what many regard as the platinum age of television,

with auteur showrunners and anti-hero protagonists and shorter seasons comprised of smarter

episodes that could hold their own against the finest offerings of the big screen.

Indeed, Vulture described the sopranos as the citizen cane of TV.

The Guardian called it the best TV show of the century so far.

The New York Times submitted that it just may be the greatest work of American popular

culture of the last quarter century, and the writer's Guild of America in 2013 ranked

at number one on its list of the 101 best-ridden TV series of all time.

...