Elliot Kupferberg is a recurring character portrayed by Peter Bogdanovich. He is the therapist of Dr. Jennifer Melfi, who is the psychiatrist of DiMeo crime family boss Tony Soprano.
Biography[]
Elliot tries to convince Dr. Jennifer Melfi numerous times to refer Tony Soprano to another colleague. Elliot calls her "Jen" during their sessions. Vin Makazian, Tony's inside cop in the New Jersey, Newark police, reveals to Tony when he is asked to surveille Jennifer that she sees her own psychiatrist, Kupferberg. Elliot has a daughter, Saskia. Saskia is a butch lesbian and an upperclassman at Columbia University when Tony's daughter, Meadow Soprano was a freshman, and gave a presentation that led Meadow to join the South Bronx legal clinic that eventually put Meadow on the path to law school.
Elliot once unknowingly encountered Tony in the parking garage at Columbia University, while both were visiting their daughters. He followed Tony in his car in the hopes of taking Tony's parking space when he left but annoyed Tony by driving too closely. In the episode "The Weight".
He urges her to cease treating her gangster patient, whose name she inadvertently reveals to Elliot. In 2007, following Tony's shooting by his uncle, Junior Soprano and the rise of his media profile, Melfi accuses Elliot of directing their therapy towards discussing "Patient Soprano" because of his desire for gossip and continuous shows of interest in the Mafia. In the episode "The Second Coming" he tells Melfi of a study that concludes that talk therapy enables sociopaths. In the episode "The Blue Comet" he further presses Melfi about Soprano at a dinner party, where he reveals to guests that Soprano is Melfi's patient, to her embarrassment, a serious breach of doctor-patient confidentiality, although he dismisses her protests casually, saying everyone at the table is a professional. However, she later reads the study at home and is convinced of its findings. At her next session with Tony, she permanently ends further sessions.
Elliot frequently drinks from a very large reusable water bottle during therapy sessions, which Bogdanovich claims was his own bottle at the time.