The very funny and charming Stanley Tucci was located in London just before Christmas.
“I feel English when I come by,” he said.
“Do you really feel English?” asked correspondent Holly Williams.
“Yes, and I speak English when I come by! Yes, just the language, not the accent!”
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Tucci is that actor you’ve seen everywhere, often stealing scenes, sometimes entire films. This earned him a cult following, although Tucci says he doesn’t understand it.
“People are saying that now. I don’t know what it is!” he laughed.
“I think it means that you have people watching a movie for you, even if you’re not in the lead role, “said Williams.
“I think people really like the variety of the presentations, and that’s what I like. I love it.”
From an ideal husband to Julia Child of Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”, to a troubled serial killer in “The Lovely Bones”, a role that earned Tucci an Oscar nomination … and now “Supernova” in which he and Colin Firth play as a middle-aged gay couple. Tucci’s character suffers from young onset dementia.
Williams said, “One of the things that is interesting is that the sexuality of the two main characters is not a theme of the film. It is a universal love story.”
“Yes, people are beginning to understand that love is just love,” he said.
Tucci helped make the film, including sending the script to his friend, Colin Firth. “Having played a number of gay characters, you want to do it in such a way that, as you do with any character, you just want to be honest.”
“It was silenced, but there has been criticism from some sectors saying that gay roles should be played by gay actors,” said Williams. “What do you think?”
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“I have a hard time with that,” replied Tucci. “I think acting is all about not being yourself. If we were to use that as a model, then we would just play ourselves. I think what we need to do, we need to give more gay actors opportunities. People who are gay only recently , in recent years, really, was able to say, ‘I’m gay and I’m an actor and I can play heterosexual roles.’ They always had to hide their sexuality so that they could play the protagonist or protagonist. “
Tucci was born in a northern suburb of New York City to an Italian-American family. He started his career on stage, but he was hungry for film and television roles. What he did not want, he told us, were the roles of violent mobsters normally offered to Italian-American actors.
“I didn’t want to play that person all the time; it’s not interesting,” he said. “There are brilliant films made about the mafia, but you can’t – how often they come with me? Most of them are just a kind of cheap copy of the brilliant films. “
Frustrated, he said he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in “Big Night”, a very different kind of story about Italian Americans – two immigrant brothers struggling to survive in the New Jersey restaurant business in the 1950s.
The film also starred in some of Tucci’s family recipes (like Timpano).
The film helped Tucci get noticed and was also just the beginning of his public obsession with food.
“I grew up in a family that placed great importance on food – that was all, it seemed to be the only thing we talked about,” he said.
Tucci is the author of two cookbooks, has a memoir about food on the way and recently filmed a series on CNN about Italian food in Italy.
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Williams asked, “How good are you out of ten?”
“With certain dishes, 11!” he laughed. “But with a lot of things, I’m fine, I’m a good cook, maybe five.”
At 60, Tucci seems to savor his success. But he also experienced a horrendous loss. His wife, Kate, the mother of his three children, succumbed to cancer at age 47.
“You never stop suffering. You never stop suffering,” said Tucci. “And yet it is, it is still difficult after 11 years, it is still difficult, and it will always be difficult. But you cannot leave – and she would never want any of us to kind of wallow in that sadness and let it take over our hands. lives. She would never want that. She wasn’t like that. “
In recent years, he found love again, with Felicity Blunt, a British literary agent who is also sister to Emily Blunt, Tucci’s co-star in “The Devil Wears Prada”.
And his very British wife and two young children was also how this quintessential New Yorker ended up living in London, where he is enjoying yet another moment of worship. He posted an Instagram video of himself mixing a Negroni for his wife during the block, which quickly went viral … followed by more cocktails, getting millions of views.
Williams asked, “Why do so many people want to see you making cocktails?”
“I have no idea!” he said.
“You really have no idea?”
“No, honestly, no. I don’t. Why you think? Tell me. “
“You know, I don’t want to be inappropriate, but they are quite stuffy, some of them,” said Williams.
“‘Sensual’? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, there were always a lot of sexual comments on, yes …”
“How do you feel about it?”
“I was very flattered!” Tucci replied. “But it was great. I mean, you’re incredibly flattered when people are just crazy about you.”
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Story produced by Mikaela Bufano, Jane Whitfield and Robbyn McFadden. Editor: David Bhagat.