Brett Martin on James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano: "He was able to bring a kind of relatability .... a kind of depth to the character"

On the heels of Wednesday's news that the world lost a great actor in James Gandolfini, "Piers Morgan Live" invited Brett Williams to offer his perspective and insight to the character known as Tony Soprano.

"It's hard again to remember now how radical it was to have a leading man like him, that looked like him, first of all, and acted like Tony Soprano and once we broke through that, you know, we started to accept Tony Sopranos on practically every show on television," the GQ Correspondent told Piers Morgan.

Martin argues in his book "Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution, From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad" that the defining trait of the third golden age of television is seen in Gandolfini's portrayal of the character:

"It was because he had that depth, he was able to bring a kind of relatability, a sadness, a kind of a depth to the character that worked alongside the terrible things he was doing in all the terrible ways in which he acted," he noted.

Watch the clip for more of Morgan's interview with Brett Martin, and for the next edition of "Piers Morgan Live," watch CNN every night at 9.
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