{"id":344396,"date":"2026-06-02T03:56:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/?p=344396"},"modified":"2026-06-02T03:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:26:36","slug":"stanley-tucci-on-tucci-on-italy-possible-spinoffs-awards-chatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/stanley-tucci-on-tucci-on-italy-possible-spinoffs-awards-chatter\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Tucci on &#8216;Tucci on Italy&#8217; &#038; Possible Spinoffs \u2014 Awards Chatter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Stanley Tucci<\/strong>, the guest on this episode of <em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>\u2019s <em>Awards Chatter<\/em> podcast, is the final word character actor <em>and<\/em> the final word guide to Italy\u2019s food and culture. The 2 professions may sound completely unrelated, but in fact, they will not be.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"pmc-protected-embed-2\" class=\"pmc-protected-embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=PMC3059489042\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tTucci, who was raised on the Italian cooking of his parents \u2014\u00a0each children of immigrants from Italy, who took him to live in Forence for a yr when he was 12 \u2014 has experienced a few of his best successes as an actor in projects related to food. They include 1996\u2019s <em>Big Night<\/em>, a low-budget indie about Italian immigrant brothers who open a restaurant within the Nineteen Fifties, which he co-wrote and co-directed at a time when he was \u201cdespondent\u201d and \u201cinsulted\u201d about being repeatedly solid as Italian-American criminals, with the hope of making greater opportunities for himself (mission: completed); and 2009\u2019s <em>Julie &#038; Julia<\/em>, wherein he gave one among his most acclaimed performances because the husband of Julia Child opposite no less a scene partner than Meryl Streep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMeanwhile, Tucci, who has played all the pieces from a gay art director of a fashion magazine in 2006\u2019s <em>The Devil Wears Prada<\/em> and its 2026 sequel to a serial killer in 2009\u2019s <em>The Lovely Bones<\/em> (for which he received his sole Oscar nom), has proven to be just as chameleonic as a TV host, managing to charm and ingratiate himself with Italian chefs, restaurateurs and locals of all backgrounds on each CNN\u2019s <em>Stanley Tucci: Looking for Italy<\/em>, which he hosted from 2021 through 2022, and Nat Geo\u2019s <em>Tucci in Italy<\/em>, the primary season of which dropped in 2025 and the second of which is rolling out immediately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAfter a long time of playing other people, Tucci had no particular desire to start out appearing on screen as himself \u2014 until, that&#8217;s, one among the darkest times in his life. In 2017, after being misdiagnosed for 2 years, it was determined that he had oral cancer \u2014\u00a0specifically, a tumor at the bottom of his tongue, which, fortunately, had not metastasized. He immediately began treatment with a high dose of radiation that left him bedridden for six months, barely in a position to swallow, and compelled to devour food through a tube into his stomach. \u201cIt was a extremely scary time,\u201d he acknowledges, adding, \u201cI lost 30 kilos. I could barely walk. You\u2019re on morphine for some time since the pain in your mouth is so excrutiating. It was horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSarcastically, it was presently that Tucci became infatuated with food-related TV programs, sucked in by the sight of things that he himself couldn&#8217;t devour. All of it reminded him of \u201can concept that I had almost 20 years ago, which was to interrupt down each region in Italy and speak about that region through the food, because no one had ever done that before,\u201d he says. Coincidentally, as he was still recovering his strength \u2014\u00a0and taste \u2014 CNN reached out to him and asked if he was eager about doing a show with them. He pitched them on the aforementioned idea, they bit, and he was soon traversing Italy trailed by a camera crew. He acknowledges, \u201cI used to be like a year-and-a-half out of treatment and I couldn\u2019t even eat half the stuff.\u00a0I could barely swallow it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWhen <em>Stanley Tucci: Looking for Italy<\/em> went on the air, it quickly established its host as a kind of a Julia Child-cum-Anthony Bourdain for the 2020s \u2014 and brought him three consecutive Emmys for best hosted nonfiction series or special. But then in late 2022, CNN, during Chris Licht\u2019s temporary and rocky tenure as head of the network, canceled it \u201cfor some unknown reason,\u201d as Tucci puts it. To make matters worse, he says, CNN made it virtually inconceivable for him to proceed the show elsewhere. \u201cSo CNN dumps us, and we\u2019re like, \u2018Oh no,\u2019 after which there was one company that was eager about it, which I might have happily gone with. But the issue was, the people at CNN wouldn&#8217;t allow us to maintain the name and they&#8217;d not allow us to have the back catalog.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWithin the meantime, Tucci remained involved with food and drinks. He became a viral sensation when his wife posted videos of him making cocktails during lockdown. He wrote a well-received food memoir, <em>Taste: My Life Through Food<\/em>. After which TV got here calling again: \u201cFinally, Nat Geo said, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll do it.\u2019 We had to vary the name, and we have now no access to those other episodes.\u201d But Tucci was back in Italy, talking about food, but with a special focus than the one among his prior show. On <em>Tucci in Italy<\/em>, he explains, \u201cWhat I would like to see is the connection between people. I would like to see people eat together. It\u2019s not food porn, that\u2019s different. That is about interaction, and the food is a personality, however the thing that makes the entire play is the three people, 4 people, or whatever it&#8217;s, and that food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLast yr, for the primary season of <em>Tucci in Italy<\/em>, Tucci was again nominated for the most effective hosted nonfiction series or special Emmy. This yr, for season two, he&#8217;s poised to land one other nom. Will there be a season three? And will it&#8217;s <em>Tucci in<\/em>\u2026 say, somewhere apart from Italy? \u201cMy interest in food is all over the place,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cBut I\u2019ll only do it if I feel connected to the place. Otherwise, it\u2019s just a few guy wandering around who doesn\u2019t speak the language and who really doesn\u2019t know the food. That may be good, depending on who it&#8217;s, but that\u2019s not me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stanley Tucci, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast, is the final word character actor and the final word guide to Italy\u2019s food and culture. The 2 professions may sound completely unrelated, but in fact, they will not be. Tucci, who was raised on the Italian cooking of his parents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":344397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20669],"tags":[1753,18930,9059,10050,9246,51460],"class_list":["post-344396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","tag-awards","tag-chatter","tag-italy","tag-spinoffs","tag-stanley","tag-tucci"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344396"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344399,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344396\/revisions\/344399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}