Actress Julianna Margulies hopes to return to "The Sopranos," but she says she won't be in the first four of the hit U.S. mob drama's final eight episodes.

ADVERTISEMENT

The last episodes are expected to start airing on HBO next spring.

Margulies joined the cast in the show's sixth season as the drug-addicted love interest of gangsters Tony (James Gandolfini) and Christopher (Michael Imperioli), both of whom are married.

By the time the first half of the last season of the closely guarded show ended earlier this year, the long-simmering tension between the two male characters seemed ready to boil over.

But the "Snakes On A Plane" actress told reporters Monday she isn't sure what part, if any, she will play in the second part of the show's concluding season.

"I was only going to do one episode and then I got this phone call saying, 'Actually...' It was just so exciting. ... It was the same thing that happened with 'ER,'" she explained. "No, I'm not in the first four of the final eight episodes and, I don't know, actually (about the remaining four.) They're working on it."