CHITOWNSAM wrote:i was looking at the pictures of the various newspaper stories on the James Gandolfini funeral online from the NY and NJ newspapers and saw the Soprano's cast at the funeral but 1 i didn't see there was Robert Iler who played Tony jr. does anybody know if he was or wasn't there. seemed strange to me if he wasn't there. i know Steve Van Zandt wasn't there because he was in europe. maybe someone can answer this.
To the best of my knowledge, he wasn't there. I read somewhere else (maybe in the comments of one of the news articles) that others had specifically looked for him in pictures and couldn't find him, and none of the articles I saw summarizing attendees mentioned him.
He apparently has not spoken to any official media or released statements directly to news outlets. But I did see in a couple of places that he had posted comments on his facebook page (though I couldn't find them when I went there, possibly because those comments aren't viewable to more than friends or possibly because he took them down at some point after.) But there were several quotes in other places that his facebook message went something like, "I haven't cried for years, and now I can't stop."
I don't know anything at all about Iler, really, but this comment tends to support my hunch that he took this very badly. The importance of his role grew noticeably in season 6, and, I can't remember where -- perhaps a DVD commentary -- but he talked about how much Jim helped him to perform in those episodes, especially Second Coming. When he spoke of Gandolfini, there was a palpable, deep affection and respect, and just seeing from a distance how the rest of the cast was affected by this, I can't imagine that it's been anything less for him than very, very sad. Apparently he just is not at a point in life where he could deal with it publicly.