David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, opened up about his legendary show and his new limited series based on the CIA’s MKUltra experiments. Last week, a London hotel hosted HBO Max’s UK launch, but for Chase, the focus was never the fanfare—it was the stories he wanted to tell. Chase downplayed the show’s impact. “Luck had an amazing amount to do with it,” he said, noting that HBO was shifting to original programming and that the Sopranos script had been rejected by every network in the U.S. He admitted he was done with network television after years of writing for shows like The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure. “If The Sopranos hadn’t worked, I don’t know what I would have done,” he said. He credited HBO’s freedom for allowing him creative control, saying the network only gave him two notes during the show’s entire run. One concerned the series title, which he ignored, and the other concerned the season one episode College, in which Tony Soprano kills a mob informant. Chase defended the choice. “He’s a captain in organized crime in New Jersey. If he hears a guy was a rat and doesn’t kill him, he’s lost all believability.” The episode later became a defining moment in prestige television. The premise of Tony Soprano attending therapy drew from Chase’s difficult relationship with his mother. He revealed that in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, she told him, “I’d rather see you dead than avoid the draft.” Chase admitted that he had to create an entire TV series to process that trauma. Chase also reflected on working with James Gandolfini, the actor who played Tony. While Gandolfini sometimes struggled with the darkness of the character, going missing from set occasionally, Chase said he was never personally responsible for managing those situations. “He never refused to do anything,” Chase said. “That never happened.” He compared it to his time on Northern Exposure, where set tensions were far higher over trivial matters like trailer placement. Since The Sopranos ended 19 years ago, Chase has focused on movies such as Not Fade Away and The Many Saints of Newark. A decade ago, he planned a limited series on early cinema called A Ribbon of Dreams, which never materialized. He expressed disappointment that HBO passed on the project. Chase’s current focus is a new series about MKUltra, the CIA program that experimented with LSD. He said it will explore scientists Sidney Gottlieb and Jolly West, whose obsession with the drug “perverted all of them” and influenced the 1970s counterculture. “The spiritual side of the whole thing starts to appear draft after draft,” he said, reflecting on the drug’s broader implications. Asked about The Sopranos legacy, Chase paused thoughtfully before answering. “Hopefully it’s that God is in the details,” he said. As our interview ended, he smiled at the ongoing admiration for his work, encouraging viewers to rewatch the series on HBO Max, where he said he thought he was “supposed to say that.”