Drea de Matteo’s Hollywood Comeback Film Carries a $570,000 Debt

Drea de Matteo says Hollywood ended her acting career over her COVID-19 politics and her refusal to stay quiet. The Emmy winner known for playing Adriana La Cerva on “The Sopranos” told podcast host Adam Carolla this week that speaking out, more than her vaccine stance, sealed her fate in the industry.

She points to real evidence she still has a place in Hollywood: an upcoming ensemble film alongside John Travolta. That film, “That’s Amore,” carries an unresolved debt of its own, a $570,000 wage dispute with the union crew who built it, a detail absent from the podcast circuit retelling of her comeback.

“I Can’t Really Act Anymore,” De Matteo Tells Carolla

De Matteo made the appearance on this week’s episode covering chemtrails and her father’s mob ties. Carolla asked her directly what led to Hollywood freezing her out.

“I can’t really act anymore … those days are over,” de Matteo said.

It started, she said, with her opposition to Hollywood’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. But joining OnlyFans to help save her home, she says, “didn’t damage her reputation enough” on its own. The moment she says actually finished her career came after that.

Because I started speaking out so much about everything, and I didn’t f***ing stop. I became the go-to person to bash on Hollywood, that’s where I ended up. Then I started talking about the corporations and the monopolies, going farther than a regular actor would have gone … that blacklisted me more than the vaccine.

De Matteo said, describing the moment her criticism outgrew any single political fight. Carolla pushed back on the industry’s own claims of tolerance. “The folks that hate McCarthyism love McCarthyism as long as they’re taking someone who they think may have voted for Trump or doesn’t like Fauci and blackballing them,” he said on the show.

The Parallel Economy That Replaced Her Acting Paychecks

De Matteo’s résumé didn’t end with “The Sopranos.” She built a solid supporting career afterward, with roles on “Joey,” “Sons of Anarchy” and “Desperate Housewives.” Steady work never meant steady money. “People think I’m f***ing made of gold, and I’m not,” she has said. “I’ve worked job to job.”

By 2023, the crisis was real. De Matteo has said she had about $10 left in her bank account while her house headed into foreclosure and a flood had damaged the property, all while she covered care for her mother, who had dementia. She opened an OnlyFans account that August, charging subscribers $15 a month.

“In five minutes, I was able to pay back Compass Real Estate, who kept the sale of my house,” she said. “OnlyFans saved my life, 100 percent.”

That single account became the seed of a small business built entirely outside the studio system:

• OnlyFans – the subscription platform that, by her account, covered her mortgage arrears within minutes of launching
• Ultrafree – a streetwear brand she started and financed with the OnlyFans proceeds
• Gangster Goddess – a wine label sold through Nocking Point Wines
• The podcast circuit – repeat appearances on shows including Carolla’s, Megyn Kelly’s program and “The Highwire with Del Bigtree”

Together, they built an income stream that answers to subscribers and customers instead of studio executives.

A Travolta Comeback with a Complicated Cast

De Matteo does have one screen credit still ahead of her: “That’s Amore,” a musical romantic comedy written and directed by Nick Vallelonga, the two-time Oscar winner behind “Green Book.” Travolta plays a middle-aged bachelor working at his family’s pizzeria who falls for a withdrawn woman with a hidden past. The supporting cast reads like a reunion of veteran character actors: Mira Sorvino, Chazz Palminteri, William Fichtner, Robert Davi, Joe Cortese, D.B. Sweeney and de Matteo.

It has taken nearly four years to get this far.

Behind the Comeback, a $570,000 Debt

“That’s Amore” began filming in September 2022 with a projected $34 million production budget, John Travolta and Katherine Heigl in the leads, and Christopher Walken in talks to join them. Weeks later, the money ran out.

1. September 2022: Production begins, with Travolta and Heigl top billed and a reported $34 million budget behind it.
2. October and November 2022: The production runs out of funding and shuts down, leaving 77 union crew members, including camera operators, editors and costume designers, unpaid for weeks of finished work.
3. August 2023: The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE, the union representing film and television crew workers) reaches an arbitration settlement requiring the production to pay the back wages in full by October.
4. December 8, 2023: IATSE sues in federal court in New York, saying the production missed nearly every promised payment and still owes $570,000 in wages plus more than $100,000 in benefit contributions.
5. Spring 2026: Katherine Heigl and Christopher Walken exit the project. Mira Sorvino and Chazz Palminteri step into the lead roles opposite Travolta as filming resumes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Split across 77 workers, the unpaid total works out to just over $7,400 a person, for crew whose job titles included cinematographer, editor, costume designer, hair and makeup stylist, and production accountant, according to the union’s own account of the unpaid wages.

IATSE International President Matthew Loeb did not mince words. “In this country, when you work, you get paid,” he said in a statement. “Anything less is theft.”

Representatives for Vallelonga did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit when it was filed. There’s no public record confirming whether the crew was ever paid in full.

Mira Sorvino Carries a Very Different Kind of Blacklist

De Matteo isn’t the only “That’s Amore” cast member describing a career-ending blacklist. Mira Sorvino has spent years describing one of her own, and hers has nothing to do with vaccines or politics.

Sorvino won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1996 for “Mighty Aphrodite” and was, by her own account, a rising star. She has said she rejected Harvey Weinstein’s advances three times, and that the producer ended her studio career soon after. “I was blacklisted for 20 years,” Sorvino said. “I didn’t do a studio movie for 20 years.”

Director Peter Jackson backed up her account in 2017, saying Miramax executives warned him during “The Lord of the Rings” casting that Sorvino and fellow accuser Ashley Judd were “a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs.” “I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women,” Jackson said. Their names, he added, came off his casting list as a result. Weinstein has denied blacklisting either actress.

Vallelonga’s film now includes both actresses, each pointing to a different Hollywood gatekeeper for years of lost work.

Will “That’s Amore” Ever Reach Theaters?

“That’s Amore” still has no confirmed release date, more than three years after cameras first rolled. The film sold in some international territories following a Cannes market push, but as of its most recent Mississippi shoot this spring, it carried no domestic distributor and no premiere date, according to production reports.

Filming picked back up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast this spring, with crews closing down Main Street in downtown Biloxi and shooting in Ocean Springs and Gulfport into mid-April. Mississippi’s film incentive offers a 25 to 35 percent cash rebate on production spending, part of why a long-stalled New York production found its way to the Gulf Coast to finish the job.

De Matteo isn’t waiting for a studio to call back. She has kept telling her story on podcast after podcast, and this week’s stop was Carolla’s. As of the most recent production reports, “That’s Amore” still has no release date, nearly four years after its first day of principal photography.