Lorraine Bracco Says She and James Gandolfini 'Pranked' Each Other: 'He Had a Great Sense of Humor' (Exclusive)

As Tony Soprano’s therapist Dr. Melfi on the HBO mobster drama, Bracco shared many scenes and moments of fun with Gandolfini

When Lorraine Bracco reflects on her time working with James Gandolfini on The Sopranos, it’s with good humor and tremendous fondness for a man who was just as much of a prankster off-camera as he was a gifted actor on-camera.

The actress, 69, who starred on the HBO mobster drama as Dr. Jennifer Melfi, shared many scenes with Gandolfini’s iconic character, Tony Soprano — and it was always a "fun" time, Bracco shares with PEOPLE.

“He had fun to him, Jimmy. He had a great sense of humor,” Bracco recalls. “He was a prankster about a lot of things. We pranked each other a lot.”

“I worked one day an episode, and we always had the Melfi scenes at the end, because Jimmy had so much dialogue to learn," she continues. "One day, I walk into the makeup trailer, and he looks at me, and it's in the summer, and I'm all tanned, brown, looking good and happy, and he said, ‘Who died and gave you this job?’”

Related: Lorraine Bracco Gets Choked Up Remembering Late Costars James Gandolfini, Tony Sirico and Ray Liotta

For one scene with Gandolfini, Bracco enlisted Jeff Marchetti, a member of the production crew then, to plant a fart machine under her chair onset.

“I made believe I was sick from the beginning of the day,” she explains. “’Oh, I don't feel good. I ate something. I'm not doing well. I was not going to come to work, but I know that you have a big scene to do. I didn't want to screw you up and ruin the day.’ … Then I would be like, ‘Oh, my stomach. Oh, wait a minute. Oh!’ and then I would fart a little bit.”

“Jimmy would look at me. I said, ‘I told you I didn't feel good.’ Then I would sit back down, and then we would let the farts go. ‘Oh, you're full of s---, Lorraine,’ he said. He grabs me, looks at me and takes the pillow from the chair. There's nothing there. So, we did it one more time, and he just said, ‘F--- you.’ He knew it was a joke. I worked it.”

Related: Lorraine Bracco Remembers 'The Sopranos' ' James Gandolfini: 'Anything Was a Party...with Jimmy'

During another day of production, Bracco found a large “present” from Gandolfini.

“’I have a present for you. I put it in your trailer,’ he said. I was like, ‘Oh, wow.' How exciting, right?” the actress says. “I get to my trailer. There's this big box. I said, ‘Okay, it’s not jewelry.’ I open it up, and it is a stuffed cock. A bird. Rooster-like. At the bottom, the word ‘Coq’ — C-O-Q — was written. That's Jimmy.”

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Through all their antics, however, Bracco never failed to recognize Gandolfini’s immense acting talent, which earned him eight Emmy nominations and won him three awards. Years after he died in 2013 at age 51 of a heart attack, Bracco remembers Gandolfini as a "very committed actor."

"I would forget that I was in the scene with him, and I would watch him, because he had a lot of monologues, which is very rare in television, and he would want to shoot them all together in one go,” she says. “I used to love to watch him do that.”

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