Buscemi, in his 2021 interview, said he had not experienced health problems but that he gets checked out because Ground Zero workers do. He was at the site for approximately five days — a fraction of the time spent by firefighters and construction workers who remained for months. The health risk associated with his specific exposure is not documented in any record available to the public, and it would be inappropriate to speculate about it. What is documented is that he became, in subsequent years, an advocate for the workers whose longer exposure created documented medical crises — not in the abstract, politically convenient sense, but in the specific, sustained sense of someone who lent his name, time, and production capacity to the work of making those crises visible.
## Returning to Normal Life and Sustaining the Connection
The years after 2001 were, for Steve Buscemi’s career, a continuation of the trajectory already established. He appeared in The Sopranos — first as a director, then as an actor playing Tony Blundetto, Tony Soprano’s cousin, in the series’ fifth season. He directed and appeared in independent films. He wrote the script for and directed Lonesome Jim (2005) and Interview (2007). He appeared in a wide range of projects, from the Adam Sandler comedies that reached mass audiences (Grown Ups, Hotel Transylvania) to the HBO prestige television that drew critical acclaim.
The role that defined the later part of his career, in terms of scale and sustained attention, was Enoch “Nucky” Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, the HBO drama set in 1920s Atlantic City during Prohibition. The show ran from 2010 to 2014, and Buscemi’s performance as the political boss who straddled the worlds of municipal corruption and organized crime was the center of the series. He received Golden Globe nominations, Screen Actors Guild nominations, and a Primetime Emmy nomination for the role — the kind of formal recognition that had not previously attached to his work, because most of the characters he had played were too marginal or too dangerous for awards bodies to celebrate.