photo by: YourTube screenshot

Rose Foster, of Lawrence, appears on the "Superfan Episode" of the "Talking Sopranos" podcast with actors Michael Imperioli, right, and Steve Schirripa.

As the highly anticipated prequel to “The Sopranos” is set to be released on Friday, millions of fans have been reacquainting themselves with the HBO series, which ended its celebrated run 14 years ago. 

Not Rose Foster. No need. The Lawrence grandma can recap all 86 episodes of her favorite TV show with ease, plus recount various stories about particular scenes and riff on theories about the show’s infamous finale, which left the world wondering: Is Tony Soprano dead or not? (Foster “kind of goes back and forth” on this mystery, carefully noting evidence for and against).

photo by: Anthony Neste/HBO via AP

This undated image released by HBO shows the cast of the hit series “The Sopranos,” from left, Tony Sirico, Steven Van Zandt, James Gandolfini, Michael Imperioli and Vincent Pastore. The six-season show won 21 Emmys and became the first cable series ever to win the Emmy for outstanding drama series.

Although Foster entered the realm of Sopranos superfan ages ago, her devotion recently garnered some undreamed-of recognition.


Earlier this month, she was selected out of about 10,000 applicants to appear on the hit podcast “Talking Sopranos,” which is hosted by “Sopranos” co-stars Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa, who played Christopher Moltisanti and Bobby Baccalieri, respectively. 

The podcast, which debuted in April 2020, takes a deep dive into “The Sopranos,” with Imperioli and Schirripa rewatching each episode and sharing their insights with other cast and crew members. A book based on the podcast is expected to come out this winter.

“I was completely shocked,” Foster says of her selection for the podcast, along with just seven other fans. As she noted in her contest application, “I’m your least (likely) ‘Sopranos’ fan. I’m a grandma from the Midwest.”


In fact, when she first heard about the show — from her husband, Gordon — she thought it sounded “terrible.”

“It’s kind of risqué,” he told her, and kind of violent, but he thought she’d appreciate it.

She wasn’t so sure — she had never understood all the fuss about the “Godfather” films, after all — but, for Gordon, she decided to give it a shot. Just a few minutes in — maybe as soon as Tony Soprano sat down in the psychiatrist’s office — she was hooked. 

“Here’s this tough mob boss who goes to a therapist. I thought that was so great,” she says. Later, Foster would become a social worker and would find the therapy aspect of the show even more compelling.

From then on, watching “The Sopranos” was her and Gordon’s date night. They’d grab a plate of “bad spaghetti,” shoo the kids out of the room — “It could get pretty raunchy” — and settle in for an hour of waste management consulting, aka organized crime.

In 2004, Gordon died. In Foster’s grief, the show took on added meaning because it was a way to feel connected to him. During the same period she was battling cancer.

“It was an incredibly tough time,” she says.


”One of the ways that I’ve been able to kind of memorialize Gordon is by continuing to watch it because it was his favorite show,” she says.  

photo by: Courtesy of Rose Foster

Rose and Gordon Foster, of Lawrence, seen on their wedding day in 1988.

For the next few years, until the series ended in 2007, friends came over and kept her company while she watched. 

Since then she has watched the complete series “billions of times,” and even named her cats Tony and Carmela, but she never imagined that she’d get to sit down with “Christopher” and “Bobby” and gab about it on a podcast.

“It was super fun to do,” she says. Even her 9-year-old granddaughter who would often sigh “Oh, Granny, you’re listening to the Sopranos again,” was excited that her grandma was chosen.

“She knew how important it was to me,” says Foster, who happily donned a University of Kansas shirt for the podcast, which was shown on YouTube.

While the hosts didn’t seem too familiar with Kansas, Schirripa did quiz Foster about whether she had run into any guys in the witness protection program.

“Where you live is kind of where they place them,” Schirripa joked, “in towns like where you’re from.”

As for the “The Sopranos” prequel, “The Many Saints of Newark,” starring James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, as the young Tony Soprano, Foster is hoping to see it on opening night Friday.

“Rumors are that there may be some other prequels coming out,” she says excitedly. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I think there’s so many different layers to the story of the Sopranos that I think that they sure could do other movies.”

Foster’s appearance on the “Superfan Episode” of “Talking Sopranos” can be seen on YouTube. Her segment begins right around the 1:37:41 mark.

photo by: AP

The late actor James Gandolfini, left, in 2015, starred as Tony Soprano in the hit show. His son Michael Gandolfini, right, plays the young Tony in “The Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark.”