Edie Falco Thinks Carmela Soprano Would Thrive on 'The White Lotus'

Katie BerohnThu, March 5, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

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Edie Falco Says Carmela Soprano Will Live Forever Maybelline

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As a big fan of The Sopranos, I’m used to seeing Edie Falco as Carmela, the matriarch. In my mind, she is always dressed to the nines, covered in jewelry, with a face of makeup and big hair. Carmela uses beauty like armor, and she’s rarely seen without full glam. But when Falco pops onto my screen for this interview, I’m pleasantly surprised that in real life, she is much more pared-back—she’s wearing little to no makeup and has a sweatshirt on. But even casually, much like her many iconic characters, she commands the room.

Falco and I spoke about her latest project, which also happens to be her very first beauty campaign. For Maybelline, she is reprising a Carmela-like character and taking on the role of the “Godmother of Glow.” In accompanying video, Falco embraces the mob wife look once more, only this time, she’s the boss—and making someone apply Maybelline Lifter Concealer and Lifter Plump & Glow Foundation in an Italian restaurant to prove their “glow.” Some things never change.

Below, Falco talks about how her relationship with beauty has evolved, the “mob wife aesthetic,” if she’d ever star in The White Lotus, and the status of a Nurse Jackie reboot.

What are your thoughts on beauty right now?

This is a good time to be asking that question. It seems to have shifted so much. I don’t know if it has changed or I have changed, but from my vantage point, it is more about embracing who you are and how you look, rather than trying to conform to some other idea.

How has your relationship with beauty evolved over the years?

For a lot of women in the industry that I’m in, the way that they look can carry them a long way. I have never depended on that, or been able to depend on that. I don’t feel like anything work-wise has come my way because of how I look. I am pleased that I can look like lots of different people. But as a young person, you see images everywhere of how you’re supposed to look, and I never felt that I lived up to it. Part of growing up and becoming older is learning to embrace that you are who you are, and you look the way you look, for exactly the right reasons. You learn to love it.

How does it feel to book your first beauty campaign at 62?

The things that have happened to me have been so much more exciting than any idea I had about the way I wanted things to go. To get offered this campaign at this point in my life was, at first, sort of funny. Just as I’m learning to step into not looking like ingénue, they offer me a beauty campaign. It was lovely, and matched my own experience with aging and being in this industry. You put stuff out there and it comes back to you.

Have any of your characters helped shape the way that you view beauty?

Beauty is obviously in the eye of the beholder. It is also about what you’re trying to put out there. Playing Carmela was so much fun because she’s so unlike the way I am in how she presents herself to the world. We very rarely saw her without hair, makeup, and jewelry. People responded to the way she looked because she spent a lot of time on it. She was confident and powerful in the way she presented herself. She worked hard at it, and therefore came to believe that she was beautiful, and that’s what she got mirrored back to her from the world. [I don’t] consider [my face to be] a standard of beauty. But Carmela was considered beautiful by some. It goes to show you that the whole thing is in your mind. She was all that, and then some.

We’ve seen a resurgence of the “mob wife aesthetic.” Having played Carmela for so many years, what are your thoughts on that?

All of it just makes me laugh my head off. Seven hundred years ago, when we were doing the show, me and Juliet Polcsa, the costume designer, and Kymbra Callaghan-Kelley, the makeup artist, spent a lot of time laughing [at Carmela’s look]. At first I found it funny, and then sort of heartwarming, that we’ve created a person that is being responded to. That’s very powerful. The fact that [the mob wife aesthetic] has come around as a way to look and present yourself, is charming and very sweet. It’s an honor to have been a part of it in any way.

Do you have a wellness routine?

It’s very low-key. I grew up during a time of sitting in the sun, putting tin foil on, and really not taking care of yourself. I am the product that I use to do my job, so the importance of taking care of [myself] has become more clear to me over the years. I use a serum and some very simple moisturizers. I really don’t do a ton.

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Any favorite products?

I’ve never been a person who wears a ton of makeup. It’s put on me all the time, but in my real life, I don’t do so much. The one thing that I own and that I have bought since I was a little kid, is the pink and green mascara from whatever store I’m walking through. The Maybelline Great Lash Mascara. It’s in every makeup kit I’ve ever actually personally owned.

Great Lash Mascara

$9.49 at ulta.com

Would you ever want to star in The White Lotus, like your Sopranos co-star Michael Imperioli did?

Totally, yeah. I would love that. That would be so much fun. It’s people with a lot of money going to a luxury resort, so it would be a little off-brand for me personally. But because of that, it would be really fun. The clothing and the way these women look—it’s really fun.

If the Sopranos characters were real, who do you think would thrive in Mike White’s universe?

Oh, Carmela. No doubt. I think Carmela will be alive when the world ends. It’ll be her and New York City cockroaches. She’s got a resilience and a fortitude that always came through in the way she was able to negotiate almost anything that came at her.

Do you have any upcoming projects you can tease or talk about?

I’ll be doing the fifth season of Mayor of Kingstown, the Taylor Sheridan show on Paramount, with Jeremy Renner. He’s such a good actor and makes my job so fun. It does come down to that for me. Who am I going to be acting opposite? That can make or break a job being interesting to me. I’m looking at a whole bunch of plays and a potential other series. The nature of my business is that things are always sort of happening, not happening, popping up, or disappearing. You learn to roll with it.

Anything to share about a potential Nurse Jackie sequel?

I think it’s probably not happening. I’ll hear about it, then it goes away, and it’s gone away for a while now. You learn to let go of these things. I think that’s where that landed, which is fine. I’ve learned that when I try to have things go the way I plan them, it’s never as good as if I just stay out of it. I had a job a million years ago, a series, and I really wanted it to go, and it didn’t. Had it gone, I couldn’t have done The Sopranos. I stay out of the process.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”