Tony Soprano’s maid needs some protection herself.
Katalin Pota, who plays maid Lilliana Wosilius on the HBO hit “The Sopranos,” was thrown down the steps of her Jersey City apartment building July 4 and nearly killed by a berserk neighbor she calls “a Russian criminal.”
Pota suffered a broken right arm and required three hours of surgery on her knee – leaving her dazed and confused about the unprovoked attack.
“Luckily, my friend was at the bottom of the steps and he caught my head just before it hit the concrete – I would be dead if that had happened,” says Pota, who knows her attacker but has yet to press charges.
“This person wanted to hurt me badly,” she says. “He even ran after my friend and kicked his face in, breaking almost every bone.”
Pota, who is also an artist, says she had dinner at the Jersey City Seaport and was returning to her loft at midnight to retrieve her dog.
Just before reaching her second-floor loft, she and her friend encountered the “Russian criminal” who, Pota says, had attacked the friend and put him in the hospital last year.
“I was at the top of the steps and I saw him coming from the left,” she says. “I said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and he threw me down the steps with such force.
“A lady on the fourth floor heard me screaming and called the police,” Pota says. “I was so horrified – I thought we were going to be killed. I ran a block away to the DoubleTree Hotel and the man at the front desk called the police and an ambulance.”
Pota was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, where doctors put a plate in her right arm – she has to wear a cast for three months – and operated on her mangled knee.
“I’m just so traumatized at this point,” she says. “I just need a safe place to stay until I recover,” she said.