All actors say their castmates feel like family - Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex and the City) and Jennifer Aniston (Friends) come to mind - but Falco says it's the real deal with star James Gandolfini, et al.
"Working with these people all these years, they really have become family in the truest sense of the word. I nauseate myself. They're as much family as any I have ever known."
No surprise, then, that Big Jim leaned over and gave his TV wife a peck during her crying jag. His eyes were still dry, she says, but at least one other wiseguy was weeping. She won't name names "to protect the innocent."
Nobody is innocent on Sopranos. That's why the blogosphere is ablaze with theories about which member of Tony's immediate family, if any, will get whacked this season.
According to entertainment analysts at BetUS.com, boss Tony's odds are 2-1, with Carmela at 3-1. Their kids, Jamie-Lynn Sigler's Meadow and Robert Iler's A.J., are 5-1 and 6-1, respectively.
If it's all over for the long-suffering Carm, Falco would never say it. Under Sopranos mastermind David Chase, all plotlines go into Witness Protection. Actors are sworn to silence.
When your blood-family members are serious Sopranos fans, that's not easy.
"My family really tries. They're funny and adorable," says Falco, 43, a Brooklyn native. "My mother tries to couch questions in different ways. I say, 'Mom, stop. I'm onto you.'
"In the beginning, I couldn't believe I wouldn't tell her. Now I think I'm the best employee the company ever had."
Launched in 1999, Sopranos has won every imaginable TV award, including a Peabody. In '04, it became the first - and remains the only - cable series to score an Emmy for best drama.
"It's the experience of being on this show that I'm proud of," Falco says. "Though we're not curing cancer or ending the war, I am, in fact, doing something of value that people seem to get pleasure out of."
