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She claimed the alleged tryst went down before he starred on "The Sopranos" ... and after he took her to "an S&M bar."
One of the stars of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" shocked the rest of the cast on Tuesday's episode when she claimed to have hooked up with James Gandolfini back in the day.
The big reveal came during the cast trip to Ireland, after friend of the show Jennifer Fessler revealed she used to work as a talent agent. As the women all talked about her former job, one asked, "How many people did you sleep with?" --- before Fessler made the big reveal.
"Well, James Gandolfini, for a fact," she said, whipping the other ladies into a frenzy before clarifying this allegedly happened before he broke out huge on "The Sopranos" and commenting on his "sex appeal."
"I was obsessed. He actually took me to an S&M bar. It was crazy," she continued. "We hung out, we drank, and we went back to his apartment and we f---ed."
"He was so the one that got away, but he was also the one that was never really there," she added in a confessional. "But he absolutely was inside me, that is a fact. More than once."
The women all talked about the apparent hookup on the online After-Show as well, recalling, "James Gandolfini's body is on top my body. And it was just ... I was like drunk with love."
"He would walk into the office and was just a ray of sunshine, which you certainly don't think of as Tony Soprano," she continued. "It wasn't like he was bringing me home to meet his mom ... let's go out and get busy. He was so sexy and I want to make sure I'm clear, he did not feel like that about me."
Sitting alongside her was Jackie Goldschneider, who cracked: "Maybe if he had known that one day you'd be a friend of a housewife, everything would be different."
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View StorySeparately, Melissa Gorga exclaimed, "Jen Fessler had sex with Tony Soprano. That's an accomplishment in life. That girl has a history, she is wild!" Rachel Fuda, meanwhile, joked she should get a t-shirt made with the words "I banged James Gandolfini" on the front.
Margaret Josephs also called the alleged hookup "a bucket list thing," while Jennifer Aydin exclaimed she couldn't see Fessler "going for someone like that."
Both Gandolfini and Fessler married other people in 1999; Fessler to current husband Jeff and Gandolfini to Marcy Wudarski, with whom he shared son Michael. He got divorced in 2008, before marrying Deborah Lin in 2008 and welcoming daughter Liliana in 2012.
Gandolfini died in 2013 at the age of 51 from a heart attack.
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