Married to the Mob Becomes a TikTok Trend Amid Its 30th Anniversary – The Hollywood Reporter

From left: Mercedes Royle, Michelle Pfeiffer, Elaine Foley, Joan Cusack and O-Lan Jones in Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob.

Orion images/Courtesy Everett Collection

For more than 30 years, Married to the mob It became a real hit, before making its mark as a trend on TikTok.

Jonathan Demme’s comedy stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Angela DeMarco, who has grown tired of her mafia-adjacent lifestyle on Long Island and is looking for a new path after her husband Frank (Alec Baldwin) is murdered by a crime boss (Dean Stockwell).

says Edward Saxon, the film’s producer THR That Demme encouraged the crew — including costume designer Colleen Atwood, who has since won four Oscars — to embrace the eccentric nature of the project. “Jonathan didn’t say to anyone, ‘Put it out,'” Saxon recalls. “It was just, ‘Let’s have fun with this.’ This describes the fashions of mob wives.

Prior to its release from Orion Pictures on August 19, 1988, the president of the distributor, Joel H. Resnick is optimistic, saying: THR At the time there was “good audience response to the film, and exhibitors responded to it very strongly.” Married to the mob It grossed $21 million ($55 million today), along with Stockwell being nominated for an Academy Award. THRThe film review praised the film as “simultaneously clever and silly, a ripping look at modern-day suburbia.”

this year, Married to the mob It got back into the zeitgeist – as it did The soprano And Good guys — when TikTok users started sharing videos of themselves wearing the mob wife aesthetic, which includes fur coats, animal prints, and gaudy jewelry. The trend even caught attention The Godfather Director Francis Ford Coppola, who posted on social media last month about the style’s return. As for what may have spurred the trend, Saxon believes there is a connection to former President Donald Trump, who is once again running for the Oval Office despite facing federal charges.

“Trump’s first big moment was the ’80s, and we’ve never had someone look so much like a mafia boss, besides his wife Melania,” Saxon says. “If you look at the pictures from the New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago, she’s completely out of the picture Married to the mob“.

This story first appeared in the February 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.