S8, Ep3: Stanley Tucci, actor

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07A quick warning, there is some strong language in this episode. I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian. A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life. Because even as a restaurant critic, I believe the food that matters most is often that snack. you cobbled together when you curled up on the sofa. Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors.

0:53Hello, friends. You catch me in my garden. I'm sitting with Bertha. Now, Bertha is not my manager. No, she is not the neighbourhood cat. Bertha is my beloved rhubarb patch. I'm sitting here considering whether to actually dust these huge green leaves. Oh, I love them. I'm getting very excited about my guest today. It's Stanley Tucci. Hollywood royalty people. Okay, I'm going to be honest. I am a little bit terrified just between me and you. I haven't always been a natural gardener. But since Bertha came into my life, I am one of those people who finds myself butting into conversations with anecdotes about rhubarb.

1:42And pouring over all manner of rhubarb recipes. Jam, crumble. You know you're desperate when you start googling rhubarb posset at 2am in the morning. Now listener, this is my new obsession. So I want to share three life lessons from my new world of gardening. Number one, sometimes it is absolutely heartbreaking. Like my tomatoes, I have given them so much pure love this year. I've got a lot of leaves. They've ghosted me. They're very avoidant. Number two, you can put things in and give them all the love and they just die. You win some, you lose some. Like my strawberries. You will not be getting any jam around here soon.

2:31Three, anyone can go into a garden centre and buy a beautiful flower in a pot and shove it in the soil and pass it off as their own. But growing your own food is very different. And the moment I saw my first potatoes come through, I knew that when the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be surviving very smugly in my house. on four potatoes a day. Probably with a cleaver as well. Waiting. Anyway, back to the guest. Stanley Tucci is known for his roles in TV, film and theatre. He's an actor, he's a director. His films include The Devil Wears Prada, Captain America and The Hunger Games. He's been nominated for an Oscar.

3:13He's been nominated for a massive 13 Emmys. He's won six of them. He's won a couple of Golden Globes. and he's been nominated for a Grammy alongside the one and only Meryl Streep. Stan Lee has three children with his wife Kate, who passed away in 2009. In 2012, he married Felicity Blunt and they now live in the UK. They've got two children. I cannot wait to hear what he eats when he's curled upon the sofa reading scripts. And I'm wondering, does he grow his own food? I'll ask him.

3:56Stanley Tucci. Yes. Benvenuto a comfort eating. Oh, thank you. This is the extent of my Italian, and I did do it in a strong Carlisle accent. You did. You did. You did. I noticed. We're here to celebrate your new book, which I absolutely love. It's funny. It's glamorous. You're in restaurants with Isabella Rossellini. You're having the most wonderful times with Hollywood stars. And then you're at home trying to make a child eat broccoli. And it's the sublime. It's the ridiculous. I might as well say this now. I do take massive issue with something that happened in the book. And I'll say this. It's page 35.

4:38And I'm going to quote you who you did call the British beloved baked bean slurry. Yeah, I did. And I meant it. First of all, would you like to offer an apology? Never. I think they're gross. And I like so much about British food. But the baked bean thing is, it's so distinctly different than the American baked beans. American baked beans have, well, they have a lot more viscosity. It's the runniness of the... The runniness of the... We're going to call it juice in Britain, bean juice. That's what we call it. Is that what they call it? That's what we call it. Well, that should say it all. We're a primitive people, Stanley.

5:16What is the bean? Is the bean a navy bean? It's a tiny haricot vert. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. A spaghetti hoop? Sp... I have had those when I was a kid. Yeah. Once, I think. Once. Can you tell me one British food that you would like to offer the comfort eating listeners? Oh, cottage pie is like one of my favorite things in the world. Make it with beef mince. Is there a little bit of carrot in there? Onion? There's carrot, there's onion, Worcestershire sauce. Worcestershire sauce. No American has ever been able to say that. Would you like another go? How do you say it? Worcestershire sauce.

5:57See, now you've got me. Worcestershire sauce. It's Worcestershire sauce. Good shepherd's pie or cottage pie doesn't need anything. It just is what it is. That's the beauty of it.

6:19Having offended almost everybody, we should quickly move on to one of my favorite parts of the entire podcast. This is when people bring me the comfort food that they eat at home. It's the thing that gives them solace when they're feeling sad and the thing that makes them laugh and feel really like themselves. Please reveal your snack. Okay, ready? Oh, my gosh. Pasta con pomodoro. Really simple. I would literally eat this any time of the day or night. I've had it for breakfast. I cannot get it. You got it? Do you think I should do it? I'm just worried you're going to get your dress to. Oh, God.

7:04I'm a food critic. I have to change my dress about three times a day. Put a little bit of the cheese on. This is the sauce that my mom would make, my grandmother made. I don't think there's an Italian in Italy, except maybe in the very far north, where they don't make this. It starts with olive oil, garlic, not chopped fine, but just cut in half, a couple of cloves. I put a little onion in, saute that down, and then either a can of really good tomatoes or in this case, what I did was I took fresh pomodoro, cooked those down and then added jarred tomatoes, this brand that I found recently that I really like and then just cooked that down together, salt and basil.

7:53And you could also just put oregano at the very end of this, but that changes it very distinctly. You absolutely, unabashedly love pasta. I've just read your book. The amount of pasta that you go through. I don't know how, I mean, but you're incredibly trim. And I don't know how you do this. You can't outrun a diet of that much pasta. Do you do yoga every day? I work out every day. I do yoga once a week. and work out six days a week. You were born in New York in 1960, the city that both sides of your grandparents moved to from Calabria, southern Italy at an early age. And at home, it feels like your life was firmly Italian.

8:46And then outside of it, you're exposed to all of the things that a regular American kid would be. But how did your family make New York their home? Tell me a little bit about the extended Italian family and how you operated. Well, on a Sunday, so I grew up like an hour north of the city, right, in the suburbs. The road that we moved to, it was a dirt road and surrounded by woods. And it was really beautiful. My father had the house built in 1963, 64. The entire house with the appliances cost$20 ,000. dollars. And it was a great ranch house that he eventually worked on over the years and was the sort of quintessential American upbringing.

9:34But at home, everything was Italian. It was like a perfect mix, really, in a way. When I went to other people's houses for dinner, I was shocked at what they ate. It was appalling. Now, there's no question I had a penchant for TV dinners and stuff like that but it's probably because you couldn't have it one of those trays where it was kind of almost like prison food where it's all divided up and almost but not as good as prison food mostly yeah yeah it was exactly it was divided up yeah little aluminum tray and you didn't there were no microwaves so you just put it in the oven i've heard about uh your dad making his own barbecue.

10:19He used to cut an oil drum, cut it in half, and then put refrigerator grills and put charcoal in it. And then that became this enormous barbecue. And they would cook for extended family. And he would take this camping stove in the summers. And even in the fall, he would go out, set it up, and he would cook eggs on it outside, because he loves eggs. I love eggs. and he would just, on a Saturday morning, it just made him so happy. Where is he? Is he out? Is he in the garden? Yeah, in the garden. Yeah, because we had like an acre of land. So we used to go down on the patio in the back and he would just cook the eggs outside.

10:55He had a stove inside, but he liked to cook outside. I think a man with open fire just being allowed to make something simple. Yeah, I still want to cook outside all the time. I want to cook outside in the winter. But do you barbecue? Yeah, I do when it isn't raining. Yeah. So not too much. So where do you stand on classic British barbecue additions like potato salad and coleslaw? In plastic tubs? Yeah, it can be okay. I mean, it can be okay. A runny coleslaw. Yeah, that's tough. A wilted iceberg lettuce. No, that's heartbreaking. It has to be so crisp, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. In the book, you talk about wanting to grow these things yourself.

11:47Have you started growing things yet? No, I haven't. No, we bought a house in the country. That's where I hope to have like a proper garden. If you haven't started growing things yet, may I recommend rhubarb? Rhubarb? Yeah, I think rhubarb is the gateway drug to going fully into gardening. Really? Because you can grow it anywhere in Britain. It likes the wet. You put it in the ground and it just sits and sulks for a while. And then eventually it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I can see myself. I've got my rhubarb in about maybe about nine years time. I'm going to be at the Chelsea Flower Show with those flowers that you can only feed.

12:26You have to feed with like a pipette. Rhubarb is the start. Rhubarb will take you there. That's what's going to happen. Do you force your rhubarb? It's impossible. I had to ask the question. It's impossible to talk about forced rhubarb without it sounding rude, isn't it? I know. That's why I said it. I do not force. Don't force my rhubarb. You don't. It feels inhumane. Sure.

12:52When you were 12. Yes. Your dad, who was an artist, he took a year-long sabbatical to study figure drawing. A sculpture in Italy. And the family, your mom and your dad and your younger brother and your sister, you all go together to Florence. And you'd never been abroad at this point. No, I'd been nowhere. It was thrilling. It completely formed who I am today. Changed my life for the better. When I got back, I was very excited to be back. As I grew older, I started to really miss it. when I graduated university, I went by myself for like a month around Europe. And I stayed in Italy for a couple of weeks and I came to London for the first time and Paris and Vienna.

13:41And I'm not exaggerating,$25 a day. Do you remember those guides, the Arthur Frommer's guides? Do you remember those? So it was Europe on$25 a day. That was including the hotel room. I bet you stayed in some beautiful places Gorgeous And it was like 10 lira a night And then you had 15 bucks left over for museums and food Hang on, were you Euro railing? Yeah You were on the train, you went Euro railing? Yeah, I was 22 I had one sort of big backpack So you came to London? Yeah, I came to London Yeah, I have no idea where I stayed I stayed in, you know, like somebody rented out a room to people It was like March.

14:26And all I remember was it was like fucking cold and fucking raining. There was practically no hot water. The people were really nice. I remember they made me eggs in the morning, which were kind of gross. I think I stayed there for like two nights or something. You must have been having a really bloody good time. I had a great time. I mean, I got a bit lonely after a while, but I had a great time. Do you remember anything about going out in London and eating out in the 80s? No, I didn't have the money to go to a restaurant. I would go into a pub and get like a chutney sandwich or something, whatever you had, you know, then.

15:04I don't even remember eating in London. I don't. I mean, you came to London and ate in the pubs, I would say probably one of its worst stages. Yeah, this would be like 1984. Whereas Italy, you could go anywhere and you could eat for nothing and you would have good food for the most part. France too. but I never went to a restaurant in Paris because I was too nervous. And I met an American guy there and he took me to a restaurant. He goes, you haven't been, I go, no, I'm too nervous going to a restaurant. So I just ate street food. But those guys, like Paris, it is intimidating. Yeah, it's terribly intimidating.

15:41No. You're going to, bonjour, they don't like her. No, they hate you. If you try to speak their language, they hate you, as opposed to Italians, if you try to speak their language, they find that very charming. I'm fascinated by your dad taking you all off and going there. Was that in character for him? Was that very in character? It was a big deal. My father had traveled. He had been to Europe before. But, you know, Italians, you know, when they came to America, they just stayed put. You know, they remain very, very much the same as they were in Italy, which was you stay within this very small.

16:18that you have your group, you have your friends, and you have your family, and you have your town. You don't really go anywhere. Yeah, it was really a big deal. I know my mom was quite nervous about it. She's just not a big traveler. Do you think that that shaped how you felt when you packed everything up and came here? Yeah, I think it was hard to leave America because my parents were there, my friends were there, although I did have some friends here. But But it also was, it was hard to leave the house that, you know, I had lived in with my late wife and she passed away in that house. And I knew that the kids were very happy there.

16:54But I knew it was time to leave too. I had to put all that, not put it behind me, but it was time to sort of take another step. I think that to me, that is one of the loveliest things in the book that you do. And this is not a book about grief by any means. it isn't absolutely not it's an exploration of ambiguous grief and the way that it comes and goes in little you don't even see it coming and then something will happen and it'll set it off yeah yeah you have the memories of it when felicity and i went to the newt which was really quite an amazing place and this older man came up to me and you know his wife had just passed away not long before.

17:44I could feel that he had not let go of her yet and that he couldn't let go of her. And you never really let go. But in order to move through life as a productive person, there has to be a certain amount of letting go. Otherwise, you can't function. And otherwise, you're gripped by pain and by loss and you never move forward. You remain stagnant. Yeah. And you can't do that.

18:25Stanley, after that initial trip to Europe with your family, you came back to the US a teenager, a period where you started eating like a horse, I've heard. You've said that you couldn't have a lunchbox at school because your lunch is often comprised of leftovers from your family meals that were so big that you needed to carry them in a grocery bag instead. Tell me about some of these grocery bag lunches. If we were sitting next to each other in school, what would you be eating? And what would you be trying to palm off on me? Oh, well, if you had a fluffernutter sandwich, fluffernutter, fluff, marshmallow fluff.

19:08Yeah. You know what they are? Yeah. What it is? We've just started, I think, getting it here in maybe the last decade. Oh, that's terrible. You shouldn't have that. My friend used to have that for lunch like every day. A guy has to be dead because there's no way you could live on that. You know, there's no nutritional value. Yeah, but that man burnt bright and fast and what a life he had. Yeah, right. Delicious sugar sandwiches every day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no teeth. And didn't need teeth to eat it, you know. I would have, depending on the day, I would have eggplant parmigiana, but in like an Italian, like a loaf of Italian bread.

19:51Not like, oh, here's a little sandwich. It was like a fucking loaf of bread with eggplant parmigiana in it that had been made the night before. It was what we had for dinner. And then I'd have like fruit and, you know, some sort of awful dessert or something like that. Then I'd come home and I'd have like three sandwiches. Then I'd eat three bowls of pasta and salad and whatever. And then I'd have a sandwich before I went to bed. Just unfillable. And I weighed like 12 pounds. Oh, those magical days of youth. I know. I know. You can't put it on if you try. Your mother was a hell of a cook, wasn't she?

20:29It's incredible. The only thing I didn't like were pork chops. It's the only thing that she overcooked because she was so afraid of trichinosis that she'd overcooked them. I mean, at that time, they were so probably pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. No disease could get through it.

20:59Your love for acting began in high school and you went on to study at SUNY Purchase. And in 1982, you graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts alongside Wesley Snipes. You took on all sorts of work from modelling in a Levi's advert, playing one of your many Italian gangster roles in Billy Bathgate. alongside Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Bruce Willis. At some point, I feel you started to feel like you were being typecast because in 1996, you co-write, co-direct and star in Big Night, which is a comedy drama which follows two Italian-American brothers as they desperately try to save a restaurant.

21:47You could have set your film anywhere. Why did you choose a restaurant? don't the movie is about a number of things one of them is what is the artist's role in society and and how does an artist remain true to themselves now if you can make a movie about a painter you can make a movie about a musician or whatever but chefs are artists in their own right and food to me was a really great way of telling that story that the chef wants to remain true to his. And then you have the other side of the coin, his brother, who is a businessman, albeit not a very good one, but who is willing to make compromises in order to be successful, whereas the chef doesn't want to make those compromises.

22:35So it's the dichotomy of the artist. People don't sometimes realize the similarities between acting and being on stage and actually run in a restaurant. And how it's two sections, it's backstage and front. Yeah, very much so. And also I had worked in restaurants and I was fascinated by that dynamic. And like you say, it was so much like the theater. Yeah. You know, or like a film set. What happens in the kitchen, which is just like, can be like a nightmare. And then you walk out onto the floor and it's like into that dining room and it's as though none of that stuff is happening. It's like an operating room.

23:15It's like a hospital. You're in the hallways and everything's really very calm. You walk into an operating room, blood is flying everywhere and people are panicking. It's all kind of related in that way. But I think that for me, yes, you're right, that I wanted to create a role and create a story that showed Italian immigrants in a different light without the mafia being involved.

23:541996 becomes a big year for you. You have a huge success with Big Night and also Marry Your First Wife, Kate. And then as the noughties roll in, you get some of your career-defining roles, including the film The Devil Wears Prada. How did you feel when you got that script through? It was brilliant. Yeah. It was brilliant. Did you know? Did you know, though? As soon as you read it, you knew. You don't know that it's going to be a hit. You only know that it's a great script. Then it becomes a whole different thing in the hands of whomever is directing it. And then it becomes another thing in the editing room.

24:30So there are those three movies within one movie always. But the script was one of the best scripts I've ever read to this day. The problem for me was I received the script. They had already started filming. so I had they all I read the script and then they offered me the role and I had like three days to prepare for it and then I was shooting three years later you were reunited with Meryl Streep and Julie and Julia which is in part about the American chef and tv personality Julia Child. In your book, you are pretty scathing about movie catering. Now, was it any better on this movie? It was about the art of great cooking.

25:18That film was better because Nora was the director. He had pretty good food. And then also, whatever food was being used in a scene, that became available for people to eat, which was nice what did you eat what was what was honestly i don't remember but but i do know that the scene that we did in the where we're eating oysters and drinking wine we ate a lot of oysters and had some great wine and it's supposed to be in paris obviously in this like you know restaurant but we shot it like in brooklyn or on 17th street and 7th avenue or something in new york does mal streep eat oysters yeah

26:11in 2009 your wife Kate the mother to three of your children passed away from cancer in the book you talk about your home at that point and how much it meant to you did it feel like you had to make yourself separate from that space when it happened we were living in that house where she had passed away and felicity then when i met felicity she came and lived in that house for two years with us and then she said look i really have to move back to england and i understood i mean it wasn't easy as i said and that's felicity blunt your second wife who you married three years later. The way that you came to Britain, it felt brave.

26:58And it felt as if everybody just embraced you when you got here. Yeah, I was really lucky. Felicity has such great friends. Her family was incredibly kind and generous with my kids, you know, with Kate. And I had some friends here, Colin Firth I knew lived here. And then I just made more friends over the years. And it's been great. And then it was also a time where a lot of the movie industry was starting to happen here, which was great. Because then a lot of American actors were coming over here. So I had a lot of friends who were coming over all the time. And that's been wonderful over the last 10 years.