NEW YORK – You can’t keep Stanley Tucci from his beloved Italy just like you can’t keep cheese from lasagna.
The Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning actor is once again elegantly roaming through the land of his heritage in National Geographic’s new food-travel series “Tucci in Italy,” less than three years after a similar show was axed.
“I think that visually it’s more interesting this time around, and I think that we try to go more in depth into the stories as much as you can, given the format,” he says.
Tucci goes from a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Milan where the staff grow their own vegetables — “Stop it!” he half-heartedly begs a chef adding salmon eggs to a pesto risotto — to cooking fish for anglers on the banks of the Sarca River.
“I’m exploring the complex connections between the land, the people and the food they eat in order to discover the essence of each region in the country I love – Italy,” the “Conclave” and “The Devil Wears Prada” star tells viewers in each installment.
‘The people are great’
Each episode of the first season of “Tucci in Italy” explores a different region — from Tuscany to Trentino-Alto Adige, Lombardy, Abruzzo and Lazio. It was shot over six months, from January to July in 2024.
“It’s a lot of planning, it is a lot logistics. But ultimately, once you get to where you’re supposed to be, which isn’t always easy in Italy, especially in the mountainous areas, it’s great,” says Tucci. “The people are great, extraordinary.”
In Tuscany, the cradle of the Renaissance, Tucci eats lampredotto, a sandwich made with the cow’s fourth stomach, and a beef tongue stew. In the Alpine region of Trentino-Alto Adige, he skis and munches on beef goulash and polenta near the Austrian border.
National Geographic greenlit Tucci’s new docuseries a year after CNN canceled his “Searching for Italy” despite winning Emmys for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special.
Much of the same production staff and crew transferred over with Tucci to his new TV home, and they embraced the use of the latest drones, giving the series a sweep and majesty.
Executive producer Lottie Birmingham, who worked on “Searching for Italy” and jumped aboard “Tucci in Italy,” says the new series pushes viewers into new parts of the European nation.
“I think before we did focus quite a lot on the major cities, whereas this time we’ve kind of gone out into the wider regions,” she says. “In Lazio, for example, we haven’t just focused on Rome or in Tuscany we haven’t just focused on Florence.”
Deeper issues under the surface
The series also stops to look at some of the social issues roiling Italy, like immigration and gay rights. Tucci and his team spotlight Punjabi migrants, particularly Sikhs, who have a significant presence in the nation’s dairy industry, and the impact that Ethiopian immigrants have had despite facing racism and being treated as “other.”
“Every country does it, and it’s never a helpful thing,” says Tucci. “And after people assimilate, then they often find others to become ‘others.’ So it’s just this sort of weird, vicious circle.”
The new series — produced by Salt Productions and BBC Studios — in many ways is more true to Tucci’s initial vision, which was to look carefully at trends below the surface of what appears to be a happy, sun-blasted land.
“The original idea of the show that I had almost 20 years ago, at this point, was to show the diversity of Italy. But also to, in a weird way, dispel the myth that it’s sunny all the time and everybody’s eating pizza and pasta and everybody is happy and smiling all the time. Yeah, that exists, but that’s not everything.”
It was Tucci who suggested a stop in Lombardy after reading an article about a gay couple who haven’t been able to legally adopt their baby boy since the government doesn’t recognize adoptions by same-sex couples.
“There’s a darker side, as there are with every country,” says Birmingham. “Italians are so focused on food and family, but what does family mean? That was what we wanted to look at in that story.”
Tucci’s special touch
Tucci is part of a crowded field of celeb travel hosts, which includes Rainn Wilson, Eugene Levy, Zac Efron, José Andrés, Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith, Macaulay Culkin and Ewan McGregor. Birmingham believes her host has something special to offer.
“I think he’s particularly good at putting people at ease,” she says. “He is genuinely interested, and it is a real passion for him. He’s not hosting this series just to host it. He loves Italy more than any of us, and I think that’s really apparent.”
One of the series’ highlights is when Tucci visits Siena, a city in central Italy’s Tuscany region, and watches its medieval-era horse race run around the Piazza del Campo. Afterward, each city ward hosts a dinner party in the streets where thousands sing and toast their neighborhood.
“I didn’t know about that and I just think it’s incredible,” says Tucci, who first visited Siena when he was about 12. “Italy was a very different place and yet still is very much the same.”
It’s that push and pull of modernity and tradition that the show highlights, like a restaurant in Florence that caused a stir when traditional regional delicacies were done with Japanese styles and ingredients.
Tucci found the food delicious and worried that Italians must embrace change. “They maintain their traditions, they maintain the quality. But it also stops them from growing,” says Tucci. “There’s no reason why you can’t have both.”
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