(CNN) – Stanley Tucci wants to enlighten you about Italy. A land where the sun shines, the nonnas smile and each dish of spaghetti bolognese comes with Parmesan cheese? Scratch it.
“I think in America there are many very specific ideas about what ‘Italian’ is and one of the reasons why I wanted to do [my new] show is to dispel some of those myths about what Italy is, “he told CNN.
“People imagine it is always sunny and people are playing mandolin and eating pizza and chicken parmigiana – which is not even an Italian dish.
“As my parents respected their heritage so much, that cultural identity was very important to me, and it still is.”
In his latest project, the actor is playing himself, while striving to make clear the country from which he is descended from both sides.
Debuting tonight, “Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy” explores the food of six of Italy’s most beloved places: Naples and the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Tuscany and Sicily.
But while everything revolves around food, the Oscar nominee was eager to get into Italy’s history, culture and politics – and why all these things are inseparable from what’s on his plate.
Far from being a land of Renaissance cities squeezed between the mountains and the Mediterranean, Italy is home to “incredible diversity” geographically, he says.
He talks about the “profound effect” that his history – Italy is a young country, finally unified in 1861 – had on the diet. “Invasions and religion, politics … each region is distinctly different, not just the topography, but also the food,” he says.
Similarly, Italy has had a profound effect on him. Born in the United States, he is a descendant of Italian immigrants on both sides – both, in fact, from Calabria, the knotted toe of the Italian boot.
While Tucci grew up in New York State, enjoying hamburgers, hot dogs and Velveeta cheese, he was also eating “this really amazing diet” of Italian food at home.
And at the age of 12, Italy changed his life.
A personal revival
Stanley Tucci spent a year in Italy when he was 12.
CNN
In 1972, Tucci’s father, Stan, a high school art teacher, took a sabbatical to study drawing and sculpture in Florence – and the family came with him.
In addition to ski trips to Vermont, “I’ve never been anywhere,” he says.
“I have never been on a plane, I have never been abroad. So it was incredible. It completely opened my mind to the world.”
For a year, he went to an Italian school while his father studied art and his mother, Joan, improved Tuscan cuisine. It was an experience, he says, that “changed everything”.
“First of all, that trip helped to inform my aesthetic,” he says. “Two, it made me appreciate a European lifestyle and sensitivity.
“By the time I graduated from college, I was looking forward to going back and I felt like I should be there more than I should be in America. And so, whenever I could, I would go back to Italy.”
… And now it’s time for your
Tucci says that Americans often misinterpret Italian food until they visit the country.
CNN
Now that Italy has given him so much, he hopes to change the way Americans view Italy.
“They don’t understand the extreme diversity of this – that if you are in Sicily, you are less than 160 kilometers from the coast of Africa, and if you are in northern Italy, in Alto Adige, people speak Swiss, Italian, German – a combination of Italian-German and Swiss-German “, he says.
“And that there is no tomato in sight when you go to Lombardy.
“I would like people to see this incredible diversity and how it came about – from geography, invasions, influences from the Arab world, the Spanish, the Normans, the Austrians. It is an incredible culinary melting pot. “
Italian food is also notoriously regional, as the series explores – but so are people, says Tucci.
“If you ask people in Italy, are you Italian? They will say, ‘No, I am Florentine.’ Or, ‘No, I’m Piedmontese.’ “I am Sicilian.” Sicilians don’t really consider themselves Italians.
In Minori, a city along Italy’s Amalfi Coast, Stanley Tucci tastes lemons that he considers the best in the world. Watch “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” on Sundays at 9pm ET / PT.
“And the more you are interested in food, the more you realize how different it is, not just from region to region or from city to city, but from house to house, or from restaurant to restaurant.
“People consider Parmesan the king of cheese, but people in Tuscany will say, ‘No, no, it’s a terrible cheese. What you want is the Tuscan pecorino. ‘ I remember having a conversation with a guy at a delicatessen in Pienza [known for its pecorino cheese] who said, ‘We don’t even carry Parmesan.’ It’s incredible. ”
The difference from where he grew up is huge.
“Someone told me, ‘The problem with Italy is that you can travel 10 miles and get a completely different menu; in America, you drive 300 miles and get exactly the same thing.”
Gathering under Covid
Tucci and his wife Felicity eat a pasta dish on the Amalfi Coast.
CNN
The Covid-19 pandemic, he estimates, is one of the few times Italians have felt Italian, rather than regional.
“They really came together in a way that certainly didn’t happen in America, or in England,” he says.
“You felt that there was a very strong feeling of togetherness, which has not existed for a long time.”
The show was filmed both before the pandemic and after the first wave, in the summer of 2020. He says he found Italians “tired, harassed by everything, but incredible, open and generous”.
As soon as the borders are reopened, they will need tourism “desperately”. But he suggests, as tempting as it may be to go to the usual suspects in a big city, “it will help a lot if you spend [your money] in smaller cities and smaller establishments. “
And while Americans may not be expecting the food that awaits them – in the United States, he says, as he explored in his movie “Big Night”, “They expect meatballs to come with spaghetti, they like large amounts of cheese, a lot of sauce “- he thinks they are pleasantly surprised.
“Almost all the people I talk to who are American, they say, ‘My God, the food in Italy is incredible.’ Which means they understood. They understand. “
The definitive Italy
Stanley Tucci visits one of Italy’s largest cheese makers to see him work his magic with mozzarella. Watch “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” on Sundays at 9pm ET / PT.
Tucci has been understanding “that” for almost 50 years, but although he has traveled extensively in the country, one place he did not return to is the land of his ancestors – he was in Calabria when he was a child.
Instead, he is more interested in the central regions – Tuscany, Umbria and Marche – as well as Rome and Piedmont. He also has a thing for Lombardy – “Oh my God”, he screams at the risotto he experienced in episode 4 of the series – and says that of Italy’s 20 regions, Lombardy would be the one he is most happy to live with.
“I like the weather, I think Lake Como is one of the most beautiful places in the world, I really like the food in that region and I like being able to live the winter, which you don’t really experience in London [where Tucci lives]. “
So, would he dive and move?
“No,” he says without hesitation. “Many Italians.”
As only someone from Calabria would dare say.