LOS ANGELES — When television viewers last saw Drea de Matteo, she was being brutally murdered on "The Sopranos." Not that the brutality was anything new for her character, Adrianna, who had been getting beaten up by her boyfriend, Christopher, pretty much since she first appeared on the show.
When viewers next see de Matteo, she'll be playing Joey Tribbiana's tough-minded, wise-cracking older sister, Gina, on the "Friends" spin-off, "Joey."
"I guess I'll be throwing the punches this time," de Matteo said. "I'm not going to be getting the (expletive) beat out of me every week."
Of course, it's also going to be considerably different working on a half-hour sitcom that's filmed in front of a studio audience and airs on a major broadcast network instead of an hourlong drama shot on location for a pay-cable channel. And chances are that de Matteo is going to be seen by a whole lot more people in her new role.
"It's a huge difference for me. It's a whole different medium," de Matteo said. "But it's really exciting. It kind of takes me back to when I started, which was on stage.
"The whole fame thing, I couldn't care about. . . . I'm interested in just having fun. I was sick and tired of crying every single week. I'm excited just to have some fun and have a break from all that insanity and all those beatings and chokings and hair pullings."
"Joey" executive producers Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan were fans of de Matteo's work on "The Sopranos." And she "just blew us away" when she auditioned, Silveri said.
"She's the first person who made it seem like a real character, not a b-----," Goldberg-Meehan said
"And you really believed immediately that she was Joey's sister," said executive producer Kevin Bright. "It was just that chemistry between her and Matt (Le Blanc) where they played off of each other that we knew that there was something great to come out of this."
Not that de Matteo was looking for a sitcom.
"Honestly, I never thought about doing comedy," she said. "I never thought about it until the opportunity presented itself. Also, because my character on 'The Sopranos,' in a lot of ways, is kind of funny just based on the way that she speaks and the way she dresses the way she does, even though it was a dramatic show and role.
"But I knew my character was going (to die), and I loved that character more than anything. I sort of get to play a similar-type character to her on this show."
And LeBlanc — who knows something about sitcoms after a decade on "Friends" — said he wanted her to feel welcome when they shot the "Joey" pilot.
"I tried to make Drea comfortable — slap her around," LeBlanc said.
Not that she's finished on "The Sopranos." She is contracted to appear in the upcoming final season.
"You all know how that works," de Matteo said. "We have a lot of dream sequences on 'The Sopranos.' "
Although there is a contingent of fans out there who think that Adrianna somehow survived getting shot in the head.
"Some people still aren't sure if I'm dead or alive. Only ('Sopranos' producer) David Chase knows the answer to that question," de Matteo said.
Although she's skeptical about the theory that Adrianna crawled off after getting shot.
"Yeah, I just keep crawling. I crawled all the way to NBC," de Matteo said.
NO QUICK REUNIONS: If you're hoping to see Joey reunited with his "Friends," don't hold your breath.
"In the near future, I think the chances are small because I think our first goal is to get 'Joey' working on its own and not be dependent on bringing in stunt casting," said Kevin Bright, an executive producer of both shows. "I think it's about the new show and getting that to stand on its feet. And then I'm sure we will have some fun."
So it'll be a while.
Although David Schwimmer, who played Ross on "Friends," will direct the sixth episode of "Joey." And Bright wasn't ruling out him or Jennifer Aniston or Courteney Cox Arquette or Lisa Kudrow or Matthew Perry from showing up at some point.
"We hope to see the 'Friends' in the future," he said.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com