Fearing he’d never enjoy food again after his cancer treatment, Stanley Tucci went to Italy – for the culinary trip of a lifetime
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy All episodes available now BBC iPlayer
Ed Grenby - 26 March 2022
"I wasn’t afraid of dying,” says Stanley Tucci, about the life-threatening tumour found at the base of his tongue in 2018. “I was afraid I’d never be able to taste food properly again.” Losing one’s sense of taste is a common side-effect of the high-dose radiation and chemotherapy Tucci endured, “and my biggest fear was that I’d never be able to enjoy cooking, or meeting with friends for dinner, or sharing a meal with my family again,” he says.
Such life-or-death devotion to the pleasures of the table should perhaps not be surprising from an actor whose big Hollywood break Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy All episodes available now BBC iPlayer came with the self-penned, restaurant-set Big Night, or who’s written two cookbooks, or whose parents were both Italian. Less predictable is that Tucci would set out on a culinary odyssey around the country while still recovering from the cancer treatment.
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy has been a vicarious feast of food and travel on the BBC, but his illness meant making the show wasn’t always as fun as it looks. “My sense of taste was coming back, but you lose your saliva, too, so swallowing is difficult. I don’t think I’ll ever be back to 100 per cent – I can’t just go grab a sandwich casually – but while filming, it would take me ten times longer than normal to chew a mouthful, so I’d be sitting there with a single piece of pork in my mouth for five minutes, like a hamster, trying to continue the interview. I must admit, I always seemed to swallow the wine all right, though…”
The series – and a second one, coming soon – takes Tucci from Sicily in the south to the Alps in the north, but it’s the latter that most captured his heart: “I want to go back to Lombardy and up into the mountains. Lake Como is beautiful, but we went into the Orobic Alps, to try this special kind of cheese, and the taste was amazing. Then it started snowing, and the place just looked gorgeous.” He loved Naples, too – particularly the city’s fried pizzas, perfected during a cholera epidemic as a food hygiene measure – and was fascinated by Lampedusa, the tiny island nearer to Tunisia than mainland Italy. “For the last decade or so, they’ve been taking thousands of refugees, which isn’t the happiest story, but it’s quite amazing, too. And then there’s their food: the fishermen take these little fish, breadcrumb-and-fry them with a kind of salsa verde, and it’s delicious. So simple, but in Italy, of course, the simplest food that was eaten by the poorest people is always the best.”
When asked his favourite dishes of the trip, Tucci lovingly rolls his tongue over the “r”s of “the pasta alla bottarga in Sicily and the pasta alla carbonara in Rome”. But he insists you don’t need to go far for fine Italian food. “London [where he lives with his wife Felicity Blunt, sister to actress Emily] has some of the best Italian food in the world, because half a million Italians live here. And Italian cuisine travels well as long as you don’t bastardise it by sticking pineapple on pizza or cream in carbonara,” he says with a shudder.
It’s easy to cook, too, he reckons – and, sure enough, the star of The Devil Wears Prada takes his own food on set whenever he’s filming a movie: “I just make myself some pasta in the morning then take it in some Tupperware.” His only foodie-diva demand, he claims, is two Nespresso machines, one for his trailer and one for the make-up trailer. (So why hasn’t he been signed up to replace George Clooney as the face of the posh coffee brand? “I know! Could you talk to them about that?”
He also cooked for Colin Firth, while making the film Supernova in the Lake District in 2020 – but Firth didn’t return the favour. “Colin brought the wine,” says Tucci. A 4.99 bottle from Tesco Express? “Certainly not! A wonderful Pio Cesare, which I love [and happens to leave not much change from 50 quid].” Yet Firth would have been on safe ground, as Tucci’s other favourite food-and-travel combo is the UK – and not necessarily gourmandising the sophisticated stuff you might expect from such a connoisseur. “I love Britain and British cuisine. Sausage rolls, cottage pie, shepherd’s pie, gammon, Cumberland pork, builder’s tea…” We should, perhaps, look out for a future series, Stanley Tucci: Chomping His Way Round Britain’s Best Branches of Little Chef.
"I wasn’t afraid of dying,” says Stanley Tucci, about the life-threatening tumour found at the base of his tongue in 2018. “I was afraid I’d never be able to taste food properly again.” Losing one’s sense of taste is a common side-effect of the high-dose radiation and chemotherapy Tucci endured, “and my biggest fear was that I’d never be able to enjoy cooking, or meeting with friends for dinner, or sharing a meal with my family again,” he says.
Such life-or-death devotion to the pleasures of the table should perhaps not be surprising from an actor whose big Hollywood break Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy All episodes available now BBC iPlayer came with the self-penned, restaurant-set Big Night, or who’s written two cookbooks, or whose parents were both Italian. Less predictable is that Tucci would set out on a culinary odyssey around the country while still recovering from the cancer treatment.
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy has been a vicarious feast of food and travel on the BBC, but his illness meant making the show wasn’t always as fun as it looks. “My sense of taste was coming back, but you lose your saliva, too, so swallowing is difficult. I don’t think I’ll ever be back to 100 per cent – I can’t just go grab a sandwich casually – but while filming, it would take me ten times longer than normal to chew a mouthful, so I’d be sitting there with a single piece of pork in my mouth for five minutes, like a hamster, trying to continue the interview. I must admit, I always seemed to swallow the wine all right, though…”
The series – and a second one, coming soon – takes Tucci from Sicily in the south to the Alps in the north, but it’s the latter that most captured his heart: “I want to go back to Lombardy and up into the mountains. Lake Como is beautiful, but we went into the Orobic Alps, to try this special kind of cheese, and the taste was amazing. Then it started snowing, and the place just looked gorgeous.” He loved Naples, too – particularly the city’s fried pizzas, perfected during a cholera epidemic as a food hygiene measure – and was fascinated by Lampedusa, the tiny island nearer to Tunisia than mainland Italy. “For the last decade or so, they’ve been taking thousands of refugees, which isn’t the happiest story, but it’s quite amazing, too. And then there’s their food: the fishermen take these little fish, breadcrumb-and-fry them with a kind of salsa verde, and it’s delicious. So simple, but in Italy, of course, the simplest food that was eaten by the poorest people is always the best.”
When asked his favourite dishes of the trip, Tucci lovingly rolls his tongue over the “r”s of “the pasta alla bottarga in Sicily and the pasta alla carbonara in Rome”. But he insists you don’t need to go far for fine Italian food. “London [where he lives with his wife Felicity Blunt, sister to actress Emily] has some of the best Italian food in the world, because half a million Italians live here. And Italian cuisine travels well as long as you don’t bastardise it by sticking pineapple on pizza or cream in carbonara,” he says with a shudder.
It’s easy to cook, too, he reckons – and, sure enough, the star of The Devil Wears Prada takes his own food on set whenever he’s filming a movie: “I just make myself some pasta in the morning then take it in some Tupperware.” His only foodie-diva demand, he claims, is two Nespresso machines, one for his trailer and one for the make-up trailer. (So why hasn’t he been signed up to replace George Clooney as the face of the posh coffee brand? “I know! Could you talk to them about that?”
He also cooked for Colin Firth, while making the film Supernova in the Lake District in 2020 – but Firth didn’t return the favour. “Colin brought the wine,” says Tucci. A 4.99 bottle from Tesco Express? “Certainly not! A wonderful Pio Cesare, which I love [and happens to leave not much change from 50 quid].” Yet Firth would have been on safe ground, as Tucci’s other favourite food-and-travel combo is the UK – and not necessarily gourmandising the sophisticated stuff you might expect from such a connoisseur. “I love Britain and British cuisine. Sausage rolls, cottage pie, shepherd’s pie, gammon, Cumberland pork, builder’s tea…” We should, perhaps, look out for a future series, Stanley Tucci: Chomping His Way Round Britain’s Best Branches of Little Chef.