{"id":2717,"date":"2026-06-01T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/01\/podcast-stanley-tucci-on-tucci-on-italy-the-cnn-snub-that-led-him-to-nat-geo-and-possible-spinoffs-in-other-countries\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:20:00","slug":"podcast-stanley-tucci-on-tucci-on-italy-the-cnn-snub-that-led-him-to-nat-geo-and-possible-spinoffs-in-other-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/01\/podcast-stanley-tucci-on-tucci-on-italy-the-cnn-snub-that-led-him-to-nat-geo-and-possible-spinoffs-in-other-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: Stanley Tucci on \u2018Tucci on Italy,\u2019 the CNN Snub That Led Him to Nat Geo, and Possible Spinoffs in Other Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tStanley Tucci<\/a><\/strong>, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>\u2019s Awards Chatter<\/em> podcast, is the ultimate character actor and<\/em> the ultimate guide to Italy\u2019s food and culture. The two professions may sound completely unrelated, but in actuality, they are not.<\/p>\n

\tTucci, who was raised on the Italian cooking of his parents \u2014\u00a0both children of immigrants from Italy, who took him to live in Forence for a year when he was 12 \u2014 has experienced some of his greatest successes as an actor in projects related to food. They include 1996\u2019s Big Night<\/em>, a low-budget indie about Italian immigrant brothers who open a restaurant in the 1950s, which he co-wrote and co-directed at a time when he was \u201cdespondent\u201d and \u201cinsulted\u201d about being repeatedly cast as Italian-American criminals, with the hope of creating greater opportunities for himself (mission: accomplished); and 2009\u2019s Julie & Julia<\/em>, in which he gave one of his most acclaimed performances as the husband of Julia Child opposite no less a scene partner than Meryl Streep. \t<\/p>\n

\tMeanwhile, Tucci, who has played everything from a gay art director of a fashion magazine in 2006\u2019s The Devil Wears Prada<\/em> and its 2026 sequel to a serial killer in 2009\u2019s 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 both CNN\u2019s Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy<\/em>, which he hosted from 2021 through 2022, and Nat Geo\u2019s Tucci in Italy<\/a><\/em>, the first season of which dropped in 2025 and the second of which is rolling out right now. \t<\/p>\n

\tAfter decades of playing other people, Tucci had no particular desire to start appearing on screen as himself \u2014 until, that is, one of the darkest times in his life. In 2017, after being misdiagnosed for two years, it was determined that he had oral cancer \u2014\u00a0specifically, a tumor at the base 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 able to swallow, and forced to consume food through a tube into his stomach. \u201cIt was a really scary time,\u201d he acknowledges, adding, \u201cI lost 30 pounds. I could barely walk. You\u2019re on morphine for a while because the pain in your mouth is so excrutiating. It was horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tIronically, it was at this time that Tucci became infatuated with food-related TV programs, sucked in by the sight of things that he himself could not consume. It all reminded him of \u201can idea that I had almost 20 years ago, which was to break down each region in Italy and talk about that region through the food, because nobody 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 interested in 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 was like a year-and-a-half out of treatment and I couldn\u2019t even eat half the stuff.\u00a0I could barely swallow it.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tWhen Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy<\/em> went on the air, it quickly established its host as a sort 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 brief 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 impossible for him to continue the show elsewhere. \u201cSo CNN dumps us, and we\u2019re like, \u2018Oh no,\u2019 and then there was one company that was interested in it, which I would have happily gone with. But the problem was, the people at CNN would not allow us to keep the name and they would not allow us to have the back catalog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tIn the meantime, Tucci remained involved with food and drink. He became a viral sensation when his wife posted videos of him making cocktails during lockdown. He wrote a well-received food memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food<\/em>. And then TV came calling again: \u201cFinally, Nat Geo said, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll do it.\u2019 We had to change the name, and we have no access to those other episodes.\u201d But Tucci was back in Italy, talking about food, but with a different focus than the one of his prior show. On Tucci in Italy<\/em>, he explains, \u201cWhat I want to see is the connection between people. I want to see people eat together. It\u2019s not food porn, that\u2019s different. This is about interaction, and the food is a character, but the thing that makes the whole play is the three people, four people, or whatever it is, and that food.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tLast year, for the first season of Tucci in Italy<\/em>, Tucci was again nominated for the best hosted nonfiction series or special Emmy. This year, for season two, he is poised to land another nom. Will there be a season three? And could it be Tucci in<\/em>\u2026 say, somewhere other than Italy? \u201cMy interest in food is everywhere,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cBut I\u2019ll only do it if I feel connected to the place. Otherwise, it\u2019s just some guy wandering around who doesn\u2019t speak the language and who really doesn\u2019t know the food. That can be good, depending on who it is, but that\u2019s not me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stanley Tucci, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast, is the ultimate character actor and the ultimate guide to Italy\u2019s food and culture. The two professions may sound completely unrelated, but in actuality, they are not. Tucci, who was raised on the Italian cooking of his parents \u2014\u00a0both children of immigrants from Italy, who took him to live in Forence for a year when he was 12 \u2014 has experienced some of his greatest successes as an actor in projects related to food. They include 1996\u2019s Big Night, a low-budget indie about Italian immigrant brothers who open a restaurant in the 1950s, which he co-wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[326,2,416,117,1623,85,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards-chatter-podcast","category-hollywood","category-stanley-tucci","category-the-devil-wears-prada-2","category-tucci-in-italy","category-tv","category-tv-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}