Michael Franzese says in interview with Jim Rome yesterday that he thinks Livia Soprano might be based on his mother. Sonny Franzese's house was bugged for years and Michael thinks David Chase or other Sopranos consultants might have gotten a hold of the tapes. He says when watching the show he couldn't believe how similar Livia was to his mother.

Link to interview:

http://jimrome.com/audio/the-jim-rome-podcast/

What a compliment to his mother. This guy is such a low life. He still tries to be pretend he didn't rat.

Spot on Fat Dom! Franzese has totally reinvented himself to hide the fact that he ratted!

He talked about you guys in the interview. lol.

I heard all I needed to hear, at the beginning of the show Rome says "he never ratted he did his time and didn't hide". It's BS. It's common knowledge he's a rat. An FBI agent outed him on that Inside the American Mob mini-series.

talked about who?

People who think he's a rat. He said he's no rat. I was waiting for him to call out GangsterBB by name.

Michael Franzese testified against two guys, not mob guys but criminal associates nonetheless. One of these guys was Norby Walters, whom Franzese considered an "uncle." Also, there was an interview in the 80s/90s where Franzese said he was a rat and lived in fear, etc. etc., and there is also the fact that Sonny Franzese put a hit out on him.

Interesting that Sonny Franzese had two rat kids, that must be some kind of record.

Another school of thought is that the Sopranos is based on the DeCavalcante Family in Jersey.
Check out this link, some of the similarities are pretty amazing, and I can't believe that Chase just pulled them out from thin air.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jerseys-true-life-tony-soprano-meet-the-decavalcante-crime-family

I was more or less joking about Franzese. He says in an interview he believes a lot of Livia's lines come from his mother, based on the belief that David Chase used a lot of the FBI's bugs of his father's house as source material. Who knows. It's plausible.

No doubt season 1 was based on the DeCavalcantes. The war with Junior and Tony was practically a reenactment of Majuri's war with Palermo.

That’s a stretch. I would say Livia was similar to a lot of women in my family as well. I like Franzese(just from what I see in his interviews) but he’s incorrect with this take. But that’s just what it is, a take or opinion.