Long Island's Robert Davi is good at being bad in 'Tulsa King'

Robert Davi remembers the day Stella Adler foresaw his future as a Hollywood villain.

"I knew I looked like a tough guy," Davi said. "I can't really hide my visage, you know what I'm saying?" But the famed acting teacher whose students included Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe gave Davi a piece of advice: "She says, ‘Don't let them put you in a box. You just do everything you can,’" Davi recalled. “’And with the skills, you learn how to play characters that can show a different side.’"

Davi has been moving in and out of that box ever since, racking up acting credits in more than 150 films and television shows. It’s true that he’s best known for playing villains: The opera-singing Jake Fratelli in "The Goonies," an overzealous FBI agent in "Die Hard," the drug lord Franz Sanchez in 1989’s James Bond entry "License to Kill." But the six-foot-one actor with the menacing stare, gravelly skin and a nose that looks like it could punch you back has played good guys, too, including a dogged cop in the 1990 sci-fi flick "Peacemaker" and a faded doo-wop singer in 2007's "The Dukes" (Davi’s directorial debut, co-starring Chazz Palminteri and Peter Bogdanovich). He was also part of the main cast in "Profiler," a late-‘90s cop show on NBC in which he played paternal FBI Agent Bailey Malone.

"I’ve saved more lives than I’ve killed," Davi claimed — meaning on screen, surely.

A recount may be in order, though. Davi has a recurring role on "Tulsa King," the Paramount+ series starring Sylvester Stallone as Dwight Manfredi, a New York mob boss transplanted to Oklahoma. Davi plays Turco, an enforcer for Manfredi’s rival "Quiet Ray" Renzetti (James Russo). At 75, Davi still knows how to make an impact: In one of his first scenes as Turco, he shows up to a business meeting carrying a severed head.

If Adler's former student is unhappy to be back in his villain box, he doesn’t show it. With a gleam in his dark brown eyes, Davi called Turco "probably the most vicious character I've ever played."

For his recent interview with Newsday, the actor from Dix Hills chose a spot that couldn’t be more Long Island: Oheka Castle, the 127-room, chateau-style mansion in Huntington. No matter that it was sold for $72 million at a Manhattan auction house the previous day. Davi likes to stay there when he’s in town and said he’s not about to stop now; he’s a longtime friend of the castle’s former owner, Gary Melius, who’s still managing operations there. Sure enough, Melius stopped by during the interview and the two joshed around, trading backslaps and insulting each other the way only Long Island guys of a certain vintage can.

"Tough guy? He’s a sissy," Melius said later by phone. The two of them met years ago when Davi performed at an event at Oheka — neither can remember the details — and have been buddies ever since. "Everybody should have a Robert Davi in their life," Melius said.

Davi certainly seemed to know Oheka’s layout well enough and used his filmmaker's eye to pick out the right room: No to the cavernous dining hall, yes to the relatively cozy library. After settling into an armchair and firmly shushing two nearby ladies — who later sidled up to him, utterly charmed — Davi began to talk, stretching a planned 20-minute interview into an hourlong conversation.

"As you can see," he said with a smile, "I don’t mind communicating."

Growing up on Long Island

Davi recalled his youthful accomplishments with as much pride as his grown-up achievements. Born in Astoria, Queens, to Italian-American parents, Davi moved with his family to Dix Hills at the age of 5 — "a very American melting pot," he said of the old neighborhood — and visibly glowed when recounting his years at Seton Hall, the Catholic high school in Patchogue that has since folded. There, he said, his football career indirectly led him into singing when a nun heard him powering through a tune in the gymnasium shower and coaxed him into joining glee club. He won a state singing competition and trained under vocal teacher Samuel Margolis of the Metropolitan Opera, then focused on acting while at Hofstra University.

An early break came in a 1977 television movie titled "Contract on Cherry Street," starring his idol Frank Sinatra. (The Chairman of the Board would have a lasting influence on Davi’s career, but more on that later.) Then came 1985’s "The Goonies," which cast Davi as the murderous Jake Fratelli. According to Davi, it was his idea to humanize the character by making him a frustrated opera singer, and director Richard Donner gave him the OK. The result is a scene in which Davi’s commanding voice echoes through a dank dungeon — a memorably chilling moment in what’s now considered a comedy classic.

Finally working with Stallone

Taking the "Goonies" role, however, botched Davi’s plan to appear in Stallone’s "Rambo: First Blood Part II," released the same year. As Davi tells it, the shooting schedules conflicted, Stallone’s team got frustrated and Davi got dropped. "Sly was a little upset about the ‘Rambo’ experience back then," Davi admitted, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. Years later, though, Stallone cast Davi as an arms dealer in 2014’s "The Expendables 3” and then, last August, called him up again for "Tulsa King."

The show, created by Taylor Sheridan ("Yellowstone," "Lioness"), features a rogues’ gallery of hard-headed character actors playing to type: Neal McDonough, Frank Grillo, Robert Patrick. Still, Davi said his ego initially objected to the part of Turco, who wears sleazeball suits with sunglasses and is, at least in early episodes, silent.

"I say nothing?" Davi recalled thinking. "I look like that?"

But Stallone, an executive producer on the show, had put a lot of thought into Turco, according to Davi, so he took the part. "He had a whole vision for the character and he paid attention to detail," Davi said. "We did makeup tests, hair tests. He was very hands-on."

Davi spent the fall-to-winter months of 2025 and 2026 flying back and forth from his home in Tampa, Florida, to the "Tulsa King" set in Atlanta. The new season premiered Oct. 16 and episodes are being parceled out every Friday, so viewers will finally get to see Davi’s big moment in the episode streaming Nov. 13. "Episode five is when I come alive and start to talk," he said, careful not to spoil too much. "That's when Sly and I hook up."

As for Davi’s possible return, in season 5, he said only: "We’ll see."

Channeling Sinatra

To return to Sinatra: Davi had long considered covering the singer's best-known songs. "When he was alive, I didn’t want to. He was the best there was," Davi said. Even after Sinatra died in 1998, it took Davi almost 15 years before he released "Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance," a 2011 album produced by Phil Ramone, known for his work with Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Sinatra himself. The album earned solid reviews, peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard jazz chart and bolstered Davi’s side career as a Sinatra torchbearer. He performs regularly; his interview at Oheka took place shortly after flying back from a concert in Uzbekistan.

After shooting "Tulsa King," Davi flew to Biloxi, Mississippi, to film "That’s Amore!," a yet-to-be-released musical comedy co-starring John Travolta and Mira Sorvino. It’s another good-guy role, Davi said: He plays a nightclub singer who’s also the protective dad of Sorvino’s character. Davi is also working on a new Sinatra-inspired album that he hopes to release in 2027.

Restaurateur Eytan Sugarman, who met Davi through mutual friends roughly 15 years ago, called the actor a bridge to a more romantic time and place. “I remember the New York of the ‘70s and ‘80s, he remembers it one generation past that,” said Sugarman, 52, who specializes in throwback-themed eateries such as Manhattan’s historic White Horse Tavern, the 1960s-inspired Hunt & Fish Club and Made in New York Pizza. “All my places are reflections of that, and Robert’s that same kind of guy.”

Davi said he’s done everything he's ever wanted to do, but figures there must be something left. He told a story about contracting a mysterious illness at the age of 16 that put him in the hospital, where he struggled to breathe and lost 70 pounds. His mother obtained rosary beads from Padre Pio, the renowned Italian friar and stigmatist, and the young Davi used them while praying. Within a week, he said, he regained his health and startled doctors by sitting up in bed.

"The nuns at Seton Hall said, ‘You were saved for a reason,’" Davi recalled. "And I'm still here trying to live out what that reason might be."