Edie Falco steps out of her wheelhouse to play Pete Davidson's mom on the 'straight-up silly' series Bupkis

"And the Emmy goes to…?" We'll know the answer to that on Sept. 18, but this week EW's The Awardist is kicking off its coverage of the 2023 Emmys with an exclusive look at five returning and new series that will debut over the next two months — shows and actors that hope to be nominees when those are announced on July 12.

Edie Falco doesn't know why Pete Davidson wanted her to play his mom in the upcoming comedy series Bupkis.

"I'm still not quite sure that he meant to cast me," Falco tells EW for our Awardist preview, laughing as she wonders whether the Saturday Night Live alum "thought I was somebody else or something."

But sure enough, the four-time Emmy winner — whose hardware collection includes a Lead Actress in a Comedy win for Nurse Jackie — is playing Davidson's mother, Amy, in the fictionalized version of his own life. EW has a first look at Falco, below, alongside Davidson and Joe Pesci, who's playing her dad in the series, all eight episodes of which premiere May 4 on Peacock.

Heidi Gutman/PEACOCK Joe Pesci, Edie Falco, and Pete Davidson on 'Bupkis'

"Some of it is really just straight-up silly," Falco says of the "absurd elements" mentioned in an official series description. "It's not based on the way a character would really behave in that situation. It really is more about what an audience would find funny but within the realm of a mother-son relationship. So it's really out of my wheelhouse."

That relationship, the actress observes, is a "very close" one because of Davidson's firefighter father's death on 9/11. (Davidson was just 7 years old at the time.)

"Mom has been the sole parent figure. So while trying to manage him and her daughter, I think they grew to be very dependent upon one another," Falco says of the family. "He's a wild child, and I think she worries about him. So it's that fine line that I find in my real life: How much do you worry about them, and how much do you let them make mistakes and find their own way?"

Falco says she relished the extensive freedom she had to improvise with her costars, a chance she says she rarely gets. In the process, she witnessed the "fascinating, fascinated, rambunctious, boisterous" Davidson at play. "There's a reason that so many people like this kid," says Falco — who, later in the interview, was interrupted by her own boisterous family member, a new puppy. "Pete's really exceedingly charming and self-effacing and humble. The jokes are always on him, and it's very, very easy to be charmed by that."

Heidi Gutman/Peacock Pete Davidson and Edie Falco on 'Bupkis'

By contrast, the Sopranos alum says Pesci's family patriarch is a "strict father." While she and the Goodfellas Oscar winner never had "mob talk" on set, Falco still had a pinch-me moment working with the legend.

"Like all of us, I grew up watching him, but the utterly eerie part is how much he looks like my actual dad," she says, adding that she sent a picture of them to her family, who couldn't believe their eyes when they saw it. "My dad's gone about five years now and we were very, very close. So I had a sense of intimacy with Joe that was not really earned. I had an ease around him that made it very, very easy to work with him."

Family, Falco says, is the ultimate focus of the series. Sure, Davidson's story is "born of serious things" — losing his dad and his grandfather's illness — but it's also about not taking things "too terribly seriously."

"Pete's whole essence is that the whole thing is just funny, that [life is] just a joke," Falco says with a laugh. "It all amounts to bupkis."

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights leading up to all the major award shows.

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