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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | That's right, c-cksucker! Go back to New Jersey! | „ |
| ~ Phil Leotardo taunting his rival Tony Soprano and Little Carmine Lupertazzi. |
| “ | You want compromise, how's this? Twenty years in the can, I wanted manicott', but I compromised. I ate grilled cheese off the radiator instead. I wanted to f-ck a woman, but I compromised. I jacked off into a tissue. You see where I'm goin'? | „ |
| ~ Phil Leotardo's most famous quote. |
| “ | I gotta make a phone call - I'll meet you at the drug store. Tell the goddamn pharmacist to call Dr. Iaconis, I should get a 60-day supply of the Plavix. | „ |
| ~ Phil Leotardo's last words prior to being "whacked". |
Phil Leotardo is one of the main antagonists of the HBO drama series The Sopranos, serving as the secondary antagonist of Season 5 and the main antagonist of Season 6.
He was a mobster and the ruthless Capo of the Lupertazzi Crime Family before rising up as the family's leader due to Johnny Sack's death. From that point onwards, Leotardo would target Tony Soprano and the DiMeo crime family, his rival mobsters. He is Tony Soprano's archenemy.
He was portrayed by the late Frank Vincent.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
Season 5[]
- Even before we’re properly introduced to Phil, he’s established as a made man in the Lupertazzi Crime Family, who was arrested for 20 years for various crimes. Paulie later mentions that Phil was the biggest c*cksucker he dealt with during the 1970’s, when the Colombo Wars were raging. So it’s very likely he’s killed and harmed many people prior to his official debut in the show.
- On Johnny’s orders, Phil, alongside his brother Billy and Joey Peeps, ambushed loan shark Lorraine Calluzzo and her boyfriend Jason for giving her collections to Little Carmine instead of Johnny, slapping her before staging a mock execution by taping her to a chair and shooting a bullet towards her only stopped by a phone book he placed on her chest. After this he threatens that “next time, there'll be no next time”.
- After Lorraine and Jason continued to not give their collections to Johnny, Phil ordered Billy and Joey to execute the two of them, with Billy sadistically chasing Lorraine through her home while she was nude and shooting her dead once she found Jason’s dead body.
- While touring a midget car racetrack together, Fran Felstein mentions to Tony that in the past Phil, alongside Hesh, cheated her out of a share of the racetrack Johnny Boy had promised her.
- When Tony tried to collect the money on her Fran’s behalf during a sit-down with Phil and Hesh, Phil objects to Hesh’s agreement to pay 25% and tries to delay the payment. Later, Phil pretends to not notice Tony when he spotted him buying an ice cream in Queens, taking off to avoid paying and engaging in a car chase with Tony, eventually crashing and finally agreeing to pay.
- Despite Tony helping pay for the damages on his car by having the repairs done at the late Pussy’s body shop, now run by his widow Angie, Phil is very rudely uncooperative and ungrateful, claiming many minor and almost non-existent problems with the car and sticking Angie with the cost of $2,000 to replace a seat, even though the car was completely fine.
- When a load of smuggles Vespa scooters went missing were supposed to be received by Carlo Gervasi's crew and split between the two families, Tony suspects Johnny and sends Benny and a member of Carlo’s crew to investigate, finding out that it was Phil who stole the scooters after interrogating a security guard.
- On Johnny’s orders, because he took Little Carmine’s side, Phil and Billy ambush Angelo Garepe, with Phil saying that Johnny wants to see him. When Angelo starts to walk away, Billy starts garroting him from behind and drags him to the trunk of their car, where he and Phil brutally beat him, before covering him with plastic and shooting him dead, despite his sincere pleas.
- During a sit down between the Soprano crew and the Lupertazzi family following Tony B’s murder of Billy and attempted killing of Phil, in retaliation for them killing Angelo, Phil angrily threatens to kill one of Tony's own family, which prompts Johnny to kill one of Tony's other cousins in Tony B's place, and demands that he deliver Tony B “on a spit”.
- During a call with Johnny, Tony tells Johnny he knows where Tony B is and what has to be done, however Johnny refuses to let Tony handle it himself and states that Tony B will be at Phil's mercy, massively implying that Phil intends to brutally torture and kill Tony B.
- Upon reclaiming Billy’s body from the morgue, Phil demands that Johnny retaliate against the New Jersey family, and also calls Tony B an “animal” and acts as if Tony B had murdered Billy for absolutely no reason whatsoever, even though it was clearly because of their killing of Angelo.
- This is also massively hypocritical on Phil’s part, as he has willingly killed people and ordered the deaths of many, yet acts surprised that one his victims and those affected by him retaliated against him, and has the nerve to act like he is a victim.
- Tracking down Christopher as an alternative target of his revenge because of his connection to Tony, Phil visits Christopher’s Mother’s house and goes up to her, pretending to be an associate from AA so he could reach Christopher, however he soon becomes violent with her and grabs her, calling her a vicious slur and threatening she bring Christopher to him, which causes her to run away and fear. This even draws surprise and disapproval from his associate with him.
- Phil later tracks down Benny, who has helped hide Christopher, at a club, stopping him from escaping in his car by brutally beating him and fracturing his skull with his cane, which sent Benny into intensive treatment at the hospital.
- After Tony informs Johnny of Tony B’s whereabouts, after he had killed him, Phil arrives at Uncle Pat’s farmhouse, Tony B’s location, with the intent to torture him and make him suffer, only to find Tony B’s corpse and unable to exact his revenge.
- Ordered the rape of a female FBI agent due to her having investigated him, which thankfully didn’t occur.
Season 6[]
- Following Johnny’s imprisonment, Phil took over as the acting boss of the Lupertazzi crime family, performing day-to-day tasks and taking care of business on Johnny’s behalf.
- Likely on Phil’s orders, Hesh and his son-in-law are assaulted by Lupertazzi associates while eating dinner, causing Eli to also be the victim of a hit-and-run when he steps into the middle of street and gets struck by a passing NYC Medallion Taxi. Though it is revealed however that the New York associates were protecting Gerry's area and didn’t know Eli associated with the Sopranos, with them agreeing to compensate Eli $50,000.
- While at Allegra Sacrimoni’s wedding, the daughter of Johnny, Phil privately speaks with Tony, ordering him to take care of killing New York capo Rusty Millio on Johnny’s orders, which might’ve been a subtle way of Phil trying to instigate power struggle and tension between the Lupertazzi family and the New Jersey crew.
- Despite showing anger at Johnny being taken away, Phil later shows no empathy when Johnny suffers an emotional breakdown and cries due to being taken away during his daughter's wedding, cruelly remarking that his estimation of Johnny as a man plummeted.
- While Phil makes a somewhat reasonable point that Johnny could potentially be made to talk by the government if he’s capable of crying over such an act, this still doesn’t justify what he said. Additionally, this proves that Phil was never genuinely loyal to John nor cared about him, merely just using him to get what he wanted.
- Following the reveal that Vito is a closeted gay, after he had been spotted in a New York gay club and seen giving a man a blowjob by Finn, Phil visits his distraught cousin Marie, who is Vito’s wife, and asks if she can help him locate Vito so he could help him get "therapy”, unbeknownst to her so he could find Vito and kill him.
- At a dinner celebration in Nuovo Vesuvio, the Lupertazzi’s and New Jersey crew celebrate the induction of Gerry and Burt Gervasi into their respective crime families, with Phil preparing to give a seemingly warm speech. However he suddenly changes it and rants about his cousin-in-law Vito's homosexuality, calling him homophobic slurs and saying that he should die.
- During a meetup with Tony, Phil pressures Tony to find Vito and bring him before him so he can kill him, reiterating that he thinks Vito had shame his family, and warns that he wont swallow his pride on this issue like he did when Tony B murdered Billy, bringing up that if Tony’s father was around there wouldn't be any discussion about Vito's fate.
- Phil works out a deal with Tony to split the profits from the illicit distribution of Centrum multivitamins acquired by Tony's crew, and suggests that Johnny be left out of the transaction, which shows that Phil never truly cared about Johnny or was really loyal to him.
- When Johnny learns from his lawyer he will have to enter an allocution, he accepts the plea deal, receiving a fifteen-year sentence, forfeiting $4.1 million in assets, and being forced to admit in court that he was a member of a New York faction of the Mafia. This decision was met with disdain and mockery by the New York mobsters, with Phil mocking Johnny’s decision and acts superior to him because he stoically served 20 years in prison himself without ever pleading guilty. This further demonstrates Phil’s lack of loyalty and care for Johnny.
- Phil engages in a business dispute with Tony over "no-show" jobs on a new construction project, and later meets with Tony and continues to put pressure on him, making threats on the suspicion that Tony has had contact with Vito. This would end up successfully pressuring Tony into deciding to give up Vito to appease Phil and avoid a mob war.
- When Vito, back in New Jersey, arrives at his motel room he is ambushed by New York mobsters Fat Dom Gamiello and Gerry Torciano, who knock him down and duct-tape his mouth. Phil suddenly comes out of the room’s closet, revealing himself to be the perpetrator, and angrily calls Vito a disgrace, sadistically watching as Dom and Gerry beat Vito to death with pool cues, despite his cries and mute pleas.
- This is immensely horrible as Phil, despite having a civil and decent relationship with Vito, was as willing to have his own cousin’s husband brutally murdered just because of the fact that Vito disgraced the family. Phil had even once claimed that Vito’s family were victims because of what Vito did, yet had no issue with making matters completely worse for his family by having Vito killed, which revealed to his children that Vito was both a mobster and homosexual.
- What makes this even worse is that it is implied within the show that Phil is a closeted homosexual, which has actually been claimed by David Chase himself to be true, making this killing incredibly hypocritical and needless.
- Vito’s death was also so brutal and sadistic that even Tony and many of his men were astonished and the magnitude of Vito’s death, as it’s later revealed that after Vito was killed Phil ordered his men to ram a pool cue up his rectum, which they considered 'way too far' and extreme. His wife mentions that Vito didn’t even resemble an actual person, making this the most brutal kill in the Soprano’s.
- During a sit-down mediated by Little Carmine, Phil initially attempts to end his hostilities with Tony and agree to a truce, however when Carmine mentions Billy Phil becomes enraged and rudely insults Tony and Carmine, and rants about Tony B murdering Billy, and even has the nerve to claim Tony B had no provocation whatsoever, acting as if he hadn’t brutally murdered Angelo, before storming out.
- Despite having a touching and emotional moment, as Tony visits Phil in the hospital after he suffered a heart attack and shared the spiritual and existential knowledge that came to him when he was in a coma, and to take his time recovering and enjoy his grandchildren and the good things in his life, Phil becomes emotional and tears up, however Phil would later callously abandon this event and disregard it during the eventual war between New Jersey and New York.
- On what would’ve been Billy’s 47th birthday, Phil invites family and friends to honor his memory, becoming increasingly aggressive as the ceremony goes on while on the subject of Leonardo da Vinci and Phil’s family heritage. After this, he talks to Butch DeConcini and expresses bitterness over having never avenged Billy’s death by killing Tony B himself, and that he he compromised far too much in his life, ranting that serving 20 years in jail without giving incriminating information has been for nothing as. He also claims that he and his family have endured enough shame since their arrival in the US, selfishly acting like a victim.
- After this he menacingly states that he’ll no longer compromise in his life, looking over the framed pictures of deceased Lupertazzi members, including Johnny Sack and his brother Billy, completely throwing away the truce and peace that he, Tony and the New Jersey crew had finally managed to achieve, as well as retiring to spend time with his family, just over his bitter hatred and selfishness.
- After having become the new boss of the Lupertazzi family, not long after Johnny’s death, Phil orders the death of Doc Santoro his bodyguard, over Santoro killing Gerry and taking food off of Phil’s plate.
- After Tony asks that he speak with Vito Jr., who has been acting out and misbehaving following his father’s death, Phil takes Vito to an ice cream store and gives him a very harshly worded lecture, saying how he looks like a “Puerto Rican Wh*re” and that he’s bringing shame to his family shame and needs to toughen up.
- While what everything Phil said to him wasn’t completely incorrect, Phil was very cold hearted and cruel in his lecture, and he has absolutely no right to lecture him as he was the one who ordered his father’s death.
- Additionally, when Tony approached him to suggest he speak with Vito Jr., Phil made a horrible remark about how “the Turd doesn’t fall far from the f*gg*t's ass” when Tony tells him about Vito’s behaviour, showing how little regard he had for Vito Jr., and only really spoke to him because it was a request coming from Marie.
- Also, Phil failing to support Vito Jr. and give him proper advice partly led to Vito continuing to misbehave and eventually getting sent to a boot camp program, where he’d likely be abused and exposed to corporal punishment, which Phil is indirectly responsible for.
- During a meeting between the heads of the Lupertazzi and DiMeo families to discuss the removal of asbestos from a building project, Phil, having discovered that the waste Tony has been sending to Barone Sanitation contains asbestos, refuses to allow Tony to illegally dump the asbetos in his territory unless he is given a 25% cut of the money. After this the waste is eventually dumped into a lake, with Phil being responsible for the entire region being polluted, as well as as the animals being poisoned and impacted, just because he didn’t want to cooperate with Tony.
- While Tony went on a private trip to Las Vegas, Phil gave him a call and remarked his refusal to assist Tony in the asbestos removal, and mocks Tony over Christopher’s death.
- During his final sit down with Tony and the New Jersey crew in New York, Phil completely refuses to come to any compromise over the asbestos removal as well as the tensions between New Jersey and New York, going on about the compromises he’s made in his life and primarily during his prison sentence in order to spite Tony and show he refuses to cooperate with him.
- When Tony tries to get through to Phil by publicly bringing up the emotional encounter between them in the hospital, Phil completely disregards what had happened and negates any possibility of compromising or making peace with Tony.
- When Tony and Little Carmine showed up to Phil’s home in Brooklyn to desperately broker a truce, Phil refused to meet with them and yelled out profanities at the two from from behind a second-floor window and angrily says that that there is "nothing left to discuss" between the families, after Butchie refused to allow the two to enter Phil’s house.
- Following this ordeal, Phil essentially kickstarts the height of the New Jersey and New York mob war, mostly after Tony curb stomped Coco. During a meeting in New York, Phil orders Albie and Butchie to eliminate the remaining DiMeos, saying to “decapitate, and do business with whatever's left”, with the intent of taking over and expanding his own power by eliminating the New Jersey crew entirely, reminding them of their past grievances with the Sopranos, such as Fat Dom’s disappearance and Billy’s murder. Following this, Butchie and Albie would set up an after-hours meeting with their own subordinates and set Phil's plan in motion by ordering the murders of Silvio, Tony, and Bobby within 24 hours.
- While in a model train store, Bobby, one of the most innocent and kind-hearted characters in the show, is brutally shot dead in the store by two gunman.
- When Silvio and Patsy rushed to pack up important items from the Bing, they are intercepted and ambushed by two Lupertazzi hit men, Ray-Ray and Petey B, and shot out, with Patsy managing to escape but Silvio being hit multiple times and terribly wounded. Silvio would later go into a medically-induced coma, with the doctors being convinced that Silvio would never wake up, making Silvio essentially dead.
- With many of their men losing their lives during the war, at nightfall, Tony, Paulie, Carlo, Walden Belfiore and Dante Greco drive to an old suburban safe house to escape from the immediate war, arming up in defence of Phil’s forces.
- Phil cowardly hid away during the war against the DiMeo family and New Jersey crew, sending his men to their deaths, in contrast to Tony who bravely accompanied his men to the fight.
- Using a pay phone in Long Island, Phil calls Butchie and angrily berates him for failing to kill Tony, rejecting Butchie’s suggestion to make peace, and even subtly threatens Butchie’s own life for his failure before hanging up. This would essentially seal Phil’s fate as Butchie would later betray him by creating an alliance with Tony and the remaining Mafia heads to create peace and get rid of Phil once and for all.
- While he does get a brutal, and arguably comedic, death in the series finale getting shot in the head and chest by Tony’s henchman Walden Belfiore in front of his wife and his head being crushed by his own car in front of bystanders, it is played for relief rather than sadness as he deserved it for his sadism and brutality. Any possible humor that comes from his death is only due to how over the top it is.
- While he does have some comedic moments they don’t detract from his heinousness and he is taken very seriously as a dangerous threat in universe with most of them showing how brutal and sadistic he is.
- Although he’s married to Patty Leotardo, he shows no real care for her throughout both seasons. He has a goomar (which already makes him unfaithful to her) and in every conversation/interaction they have, not once does he ever give her any sort of affection. Rather he’s usually demanding and disrespectful when talking to Patty, even right before he’s killed in front of her. Due to the fact he is implied to be a closeted homosexual and she's shown to be extremely homophobic, this further proves he doesn't care for her and likely only married her to keep up appearances.
What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]
- Despite being one of the most vile criminals in the show, he does care for a few people:
- Genuinely loves his younger brother Billy, as he appreciated how he took care of the family during his absence. His death was why Phil ordered Blundetto's death for killing him, proving how much he cared for him.
- During the series finale, prior to his execution, Phil shows himself to be a doting grandfather who clearly loves his infant grandchildren.
- Cares for Gerry Torciano, treating him as his protégé which leads him to kill Santorro to avenge Gerry’s death.
- Seemingly regretted murdering Vito for being gay to a degree. This is shown in the night after Vito’s funeral, he stares up at the ceiling silently as his wife sleeps next to him. He also regretted threatening Joanne Moltisanti, allowing her to leave his grasp before placing a hand on his head. Although both of these cases those feelings were fleeting and not really elaborated on.
Trivia[]
- Phil Leotardo is, alongside Johnny Boy Soprano, one of the two The Sopranos villains to be Near Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Phil Leotardo on the Sopranos Wiki
- Phil Leotardo on the Villains Wiki
