Norma was born in Essex County, New Jersey, as one of twelve children to Marian D'Agostino and Vito Bucco, who immigrated from Ariano, Campania and Fossacesia, Abruzzo respectively.

[3][4][5][6] Henry was born in Providence, Rhode Island, as one of seven children, the son of Teresa Melfi, who was married to Giovanni DeCesare, 17 years her senior.

Henry and his sister Evelina (Evelyn), however, were the biological children of Giuseppe "Joseph" Fusco, a 21-year-old Italian immigrant who was lodging with the DeCesares since 1904.

[11] He says that his father was an angry man who belittled him constantly, and his mother was a "passive-aggressive drama queen" and a "nervous woman who dominated any situation she was in by being so needy and always on the verge of hysteria."

He graduated from high school in 1964 and attended Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his depression worsened.

[18] Chase started in Hollywood as a story editor for Kolchak: The Night Stalker and then produced episodes of The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure, among other series.

[11][18][23] He drew heavily from his personal life and his experiences growing up in New Jersey, and has stated that he tried to apply his own "family dynamic to mobsters".

[23] They eventually pitched the show to Chris Albrecht, president of HBO Original Programming, who decided to finance a pilot episode[11][18] which was shot in 1997.

"[34] In 2022, Chase and Phil Abraham created a 2022 Super Bowl spot for Commonwealth / McCann with two characters from the show who appear in a 2021 New York City/New Jersey setting.

[35] In September 2024, HBO released a two-part documentary called Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos.

[37][38] Described as "a music-driven coming-of-age story," the film reunites Chase with James Gandolfini (former star of Sopranos), who co-stars as Magaro's father.

[37] Other cast members include Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald, Molly Price, Lisa Lampanelli, Jack Huston and Brad Garrett.

Another former Sopranos cast member, Steven Van Zandt, served as music supervisor and executive producer.

According to an HBO press release, the series' pilot would "begin in 1913 and follow two men, one a college-educated mechanical engineer, the other a cowboy with a violent past, who form an unlikely producing partnership and together become pioneers and then powers for a time in motion pictures."

Specifically, the two men would "begin as employees of D.W. Griffith, and then cross career paths with John Ford, John Wayne, Raoul Walsh, Bette Davis, Billy Wilder and others who gave shape to Hollywood as it grew from the age of rough-hewn silent Westerns, to the golden era of talkies and the studio system, to the auteur movement, to television, and finally to the present day."

[49] However, he said in later interviews that he watched Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, the work of former Sopranos writers and producers Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner, respectively.