Jennifer Esposito Talks Directorial Debut ‘Fresh Kills’ and Why She Refused to Audition for ‘The Sopranos’

Jennifer Esposito remembers being asked to audition for The Sopranos more than once. She declined each time.

I chose to not go up for it when they would call me in because it was like, I cant relive this, Esposito recalls. The only thing that used to make me crazy about the show when I did watch it was the character of Meadow because she was very nice. The girls I grew up around wanted to kill me, wanted to kill me every day. So it was PTSD.

Esposito grew up among organized crime on Staten Island. Staten Island is the same Staten Island from when I left when I was 18 years old, says the 50-year-old actor, whose credits span from televisions Spin City and Blue Bloods to the Oscar-winning Crash. Its still the same place. You need to understand that nothing leaves this island. Its a very strange time warp of a place.

But now art imitates life for Esposito. She makes her writing and directorial debut with Fresh Kills, an indie drama set in the late 1980s and early 1990s about two sisters (Odessa Azion and Emily Bader) whose mother (Esposito) tries to hold the family together when the girls mafia boss father (Domenick Lombardozzi) goes to prison. Its a script that had been percolating and marinating since Esposito was 16, she says.

And then I just got so frustrated with where my career had gone and where it was supposed to go the way I feel it should have and I thought, Instead of complaining about the stuff that youre not getting and not seeing, I cant complain anymore,' she says. It was like youre either quitting or youre going to do something about it. I would say, without being dramatic, I dont think Id be able to die unless I do this. It was something that needed to be done.

Fresh Kills premieres during Tribeca Film Festival on June 16.

Jennifer Esposito (right) directing on the set of Fresh Kills. Working on the movie has been therapeutic. Esposito says she lived with unexplained rage for much of her life. I had partners who would always tell me, Youre so angry, she says. Id be like, Im not angry. But I was. There was anger and rage.

She points to the violence and fear that haunted her childhood, emotions that play out in one particular scene in the movie when the sisters get into a horrific brawl with a couple of other girls from the neighborhood because they insulted their dad. The fighting is savage and ends with faces bloodied from being hit with broken bottles and slammed against brick walls and concrete streets.

I dont think people understand unless you lived it. Thats what I saw. And they were in their Catholic school uniforms, and theyd pull a girl on a table in a diner and beat the hell out of her till her face is off, Esposito says. Its that kind of stuff. I wanted to capture that. Its unleashing a rage that they cant acknowledge where its coming from, because as soon as you touch that button of the father, its a match dont touch it.

She understands now that The Sopranos was only depicting a slice of Italian-American life. They wanted me to come in a few times for certain things, and I was like, No. The way youre portraying Italian culture? Oh, get over yourself. Really? Esposito says. It was an amazing show. But youre a kid. You dont see that. Of course I look back, and its like, That was stupid.

Even so, this helped propel Esposito to become a director a move she knew was right for her the moment she first called, Action!

I could cry now. It was nerve-wracking and beautiful, but I knew I was right where I was supposed to be, Esposito says. I have to say, I feel so at home in this position. I dont even care if Im ever in front of the camera again. This? Every angle is me. Every piece of clothing, every lighting, every music cue, every sound is me. This movie is my heart.

She cant wait for the premiere party. She hopes the menu includes rainbow cookies and fried donut balls known as zeppolis, both of which are signatures of New York Italian bakeries and street fairs.

We laugh at my suggestion that Aqua Net host the festivities in honor of the movies big 80s hair. Esposito smiles, I want the party to smell like Aqua Net and zeppolis.