‘Jewel-box of wanderlust’ series brings daddy-O vibes
If you are in the market for a show featuring Stanley Tucci in a hair net — rocking his signature black specs and rapier wit — as he oohs over a giant tub of mozzarella, sitting in a salt bath … then, darling, do I have the show for you.
If you are in the market, likewise, for a show featuring the very Tucci, on a boat in Sicily, the breeze blowing through a handsome baby-blue linen shirt as he makes his way to the island of Ischia … then,
ditto, do I have the show for you.
Just two of the moments that make up the jewel-box of wanderlust in the new six-part CNN series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,” the latter being one that merges the historical with the personal (when the show flutters most) as the actor-turned-star foodie makes way to a restaurant that he once visited with his late wife, Kate (she died of breast cancer in 2009). Far from the seaside crowds, and away from the usual suspects, it is a family-run spot — specializing in rabbit! — deep in the woods, sunk in the mountains, a vestige of the pirates and foreign armies that used to wash up on the shores of this gleaming island, and why ancient families chose to live up, up, up.
Cue the simple herbs, white wine, garlic. Tis the lesson in gourmet rabbit that Tucci gets from a star chef — not very fatty, Tucci sidebars — as he later sits down to eat at a long table with the extended familia in a picture-perfect setting straight out of a Bertolucci film.
Amazingly, it is maybe only the second or third moneyshot in the premiere episode of a show that is essentially Pornhub for Italy — the ep ending at a whole other restaurant on the edge of the Amalfi Coast. With his now-wife Felicity Blunt in tow, there they are caught up in a once-a-year downpour — the cameras cannily catching the darkening skies and tempestuous seas — as the couple winds up joyously chowing down on pasta galore with staff in the deserted resto.
If we are going down, we are going down well-fed: the underscore of the scene.
One, arguably, that is one of the most glorious onscreen moments — movie or otherwise — of the last year.
Having previewed the first two eps of this all-out Italian fest, I can now also hereby declare: CNN has found a worthy contender to the programming hole left by the late, great Anthony Bourdain. But where the latter was a miserabilist with a secret tender heart, fuelled by a kind of foreign correspondent hustle, Tucci’s vibe is all daddy-O sensualist all the time. Different, for sure … but one that more than does the trick.
Incidentally, it is a show that also reinforces Tucci as one of the few celebrity winners of the pandemic. One of those slow-and-steady stars — one with a never too hot, never too cold Q-rating — his food sidehustle has been burning ever since that ’90s cult film “Big Night” (which has one of the great unbroken scenes in movie history in its final scene, when he cooks an omelette; not to mention one of the few movies you can look up to see Stanley with hair). Later burnished by his supporting role in “Julie & Julia,” playing the husband to Meryl Streep’s Julia Child, and also with two cookbooks to his name, Tucci reached maximum exposure in the earliest days of the lockdown when he — the bespectacled messiah as one writer in Repeller described him — set the internet on fire with an Instagram video on how to make a Negroni (or, as he called it, “the ubiquitous Milanese cocktail”).
His forearms — shown off in a tight black polo shirt — caused specific adulation, even provoking one fan to tweet this ode:
When Stanley’s cooking dinner his sleeves get in the way.
But when he rolls them up it makes us feel some kind of way.
It’s not just that they’re hairy, or muscular, or tan.
It’s all these things and more that give us no choice but to stan.
The writer in Repeller, moreover, went on to sum up the allure of the pert 60-year-old in that he is the consummate Sauce Man, a.k.a. a person “who gives off the aura of feeding you marinara on a wooden spoon, gently blowing on the sauce to make sure it is not too hot, seeking both your approval and admiration of their slow, simmering labor (sic). A mix of sensuality and support, a Sauce Man seeks simple pleasures and delights in sharing them with you.”
His Q-factor has swelled, I concur, via two additional factors. One, because of that warm, mellifluous voice, soft as panna cotta. Two, in that he is that rare Hollywood bird not only content to play the supporting role in movies, he luxuriates in it, turning the idea of supporting into a sort of indispensable — be it the awesome dad in “Easy A,” the let-his-wife-shine hubby in “Julie & Julia” or the ultimate work wife in “The Devil Wears Prada.” From his role as the cha-cha-ing office colleague to Richard Gere in the movie “Shall We Dance?” to the probono-crackling lawyer in the Oscar-winning “Spotlight” to the purple-and-blue-haired Caesar Flickerman in “Hunger Games,” Tucci is that dude: he makes every ensemble, no matter how small his role, better.
For Tucci, this turn with CNN is one he was probably always meant to do. His whole life, arguably, has been leading up to it. For one, it represents a return to the country where he lived when he was 12, back when his teacher-pop was on sabbatical at the Accademia Gallery in Florence. He remembers lurking in museums, becoming something of an art buff, but also learning to speak Italian fairly fluently. It was the best experience of a lifetime, he once told the Guardian.
Food-wise, his Italian-ness was always an animating force. “It was integral to who we were and the way we lived,” he has said. “Thanks to my mum and my grandparents on both sides, there was always amazing food. My grandmother, Concetta, was constantly cooking. She made her own pizza and pasta. My grandfather made his own wine. They used every element from their garden. They bottled their own tomatoes.”
Sitting down to dinner every night has been a rite in his own household — first with his kids with Kate, and now with his new wife and their two young kids, based in London (Felicity, by the way, is a literary agent and the sister of Emily Blunt!). “Food has become a kind of obsession with me,” he says, “but it is more than that, it is another limb or organ, it is part of who I am.”
And now we all get to enjoy it, too. Bring on la dolce Tucci … right?
This turn with CNN is one Tucci was probably always meant to do. His whole life has been leading up to it