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00:00When Stanley Tucci is not making hit movies like The Devil Wears Prada 2, you can often find him
00:07in Italy, the land of his ancestors. And fortunately, when he's been going recently,
00:13he's willing to take us along with him in the marvelous series from National Geographic called
00:20Tucci in Italy. It's back for season two, and we are joined now by Stanley Tucci, who is the host
00:26and executive producer of the series. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me.
00:32So you really, in both the first season and now in season two, travel all throughout Italy.
00:38In the first episode of the second season, you were going to the Campania region,
00:45Naples being the capital there. And before we get into some questions, let's take a look
00:49at a clip from your experience in Campania and specifically in Naples. And here,
00:55you were going to take us to a restaurant called Mimi alla Ferrovia.
01:00So let's go ahead and roll that clip.
01:03Mimi alla Ferrovia is a Neapolitan institution. It's been going strong for 83 years,
01:09under three generations of the same family.
01:13Stanley, ciao.
01:14Buongiorno.
01:14Buongiorno.
01:15Come say?
01:15How are you?
01:16Nice to see you.
01:17Nice to see you too.
01:18It's run today by Chef Salvatore Giuliano.
01:22Come here. I want to show you also the pepperoni. Look.
01:25Oh, beautiful.
01:26How we do the stuffed grilled pepper. We cook on the grill.
01:29You stuff them?
01:30We stuff everything.
01:32Okay, so...
01:33And now I'm doing the parmigian.
01:34Yes.
01:34Then we fried the eggplant. We have the tomato that is coming from, you know, Napoli,
01:40Campania.
01:40Yeah.
01:41We have maybe one of the best tomatoes in Italy because...
01:45In the world.
01:45We are using here a tomato from Vesuvio. And then we do now like a kind of lasagna,
01:51but only with vegetables and mozzarella, parmigiano, and basil. This is the very old recipe
01:59that we are in war with Emilia-Romagna and with Sicily because it is a kind of battle between
02:08the regions of Italy about the parmigiana.
02:11Though its origins are disputed, the first recorded recipe for parmigiana can be traced
02:17back to the 1700s when Naples was conquered by the Bourbons.
02:21Like steps, stairs.
02:22In fact, French influences can be felt throughout Neapolitan cuisine. Even ragout gets its name
02:29from the French word for stew.
02:31This is what my family make. Not breaded, like you. I like it without the...
02:36Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:37No, no, no.
02:38Fine, I got to jump.
02:38Yeah, no me piace.
02:39No, no.
02:40We don't need it.
02:40È troppo pesante.
02:41Yeah.
02:42Oh, I can't wait.
02:43All right, I'm going to go to see...
02:45Yeah, okay.
02:46Stanley.
02:46Thanks.
02:47See you at the table.
02:47Buon appetito.
02:49I think one of the really distinctive things about your approach to this series, Stanley,
02:56is that you go off the beaten path. Yes, people, of course, have heard of Naples and hopefully
03:01have visited Napoli if they're lucky. But here you're going to a section of the city, Sanita,
03:07that isn't well-traveled, certainly by tourists. So you really do try to find out of the way
03:12undiscovered places.
03:14Yeah, it's more interesting that way. There's no point in me, you know, sort of rehashing
03:19what everybody knows, everybody's seen a thousand times. There's, you know, there's no significance
03:26to that. We want to be able to dig a little bit deeper into the culture, into the culinary
03:33culture, but also the, you know, the culture of the city itself or the place itself or the
03:41people themselves.
03:42There's a volcanic element to this season, because, of course, Vesuvius overshadows much
03:50of Naples and Pompeii, of course. But also, you go to Sicily, Sicilia, where Mount Etna is,
04:01also an active volcano. Did you have any trepidation of going there? There might be an eruption while
04:05you're least expecting it.
04:07Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I mean, there's quite a trek up there. You don't have to take
04:12a special vehicle up there and everything. And it was, yeah, actually, a little while after
04:20we left, I think there was an eruption. You know, it's constantly erupting. When we were
04:26in Calabria years ago, you would look out across the Strait of Messina and you'd see
04:36Etna. You'd see the fire, you know, sort of spitting fire in the distance. It was really
04:42quite beautiful and a little scary.
04:45Yes, I can imagine. In the second season, you also go to La Marque, which is along the
04:52Adriatic. You go to Veneto. I hope I'm pronouncing it right, which, you know, for Venice, but you're
04:59again going off the beaten path there. And you're in Palermo, for instance, in Sicilia,
05:07and in Sardinia. How do you decide where to go?
05:11Well, we had done, I had been to some of those before. We hadn't really gone into the Veneto.
05:17We had done Venice. And we had never gone into La Marque. And I love La Marque. We go
05:24on vacation there on occasion. And I like it because it's, again, it's sort of off the beaten
05:32track. And, you know, a lot of people don't know about it. Italians will take holidays there,
05:38but not so much Americans and Brits. You'll have more Germans or Scandinavian
05:47tourists there. But really, really beautiful, beautiful area that has a great coastline.
05:55It's a very sort of eco-friendly region. And the food is amazing. The food is just this wonderful
06:04sort of, you know, cross between Florentine and Roman and Abruzzo. And it's kind of like,
06:10almost like the perfect region in a way. But yeah, we, you know, we knew that we had to,
06:19you know, we wanted to try to cover almost every region. But then the stories themselves
06:24are sometimes they're stories that I'll say, I want to go to La Marque because people, you
06:31know, don't know about it, which is probably a terrible idea. Now everybody in La Marque is
06:34going to be angry, but, you know, all these Americans are coming over. But, you know,
06:40sometimes it's just a story. Sometimes it's a restaurant that I went to. Sometimes it's
06:45a story that I read about. Sometimes it's whatever. And then we have a team of researchers
06:49who then can come up with their stories and then say, what about this? And then we sort of
06:55piece it all together. You know, you're sort of constructing a puzzle.
07:01Yes. And many interesting ingredients in that recipe to use a different metaphor. And some
07:07of the dishes are just, I mean, the series is beautiful. It's a little bit painful in
07:12the sense of, oh my goodness, I'm going to crawl under the screen and share the meals with
07:17you. I was fascinated. You had a lemon salad in Procida, in the island. In another place,
07:25you had spaghetti made with sea rocks. Yeah. Really quite extraordinary.
07:32Extraordinary and delicious. The thing is that a lot of the stuff, you know, stuff that
07:37we don't know about, I've never heard of either of those things. And when somebody said, there's
07:43this guy who does the thing with the rocks. And I was like, that is fascinating. That I have
07:49to try. Because that is the ultimate dish of poverty, the cucina povita. And as he says
07:58in the show, he says, when we were kids, we used to go down and get the rocks and bring
08:01them up and we'd make spaghetti. And it was delicious. But it's that sort of Italian ingenuity
08:09and resourcefulness that has kept that country going for thousands of years.
08:18Yeah. And I think many people have sampled, if they're lucky, spaghetti a la mongole, you
08:24know, with clams. This is fascinating because as is explained by the chef, this is, the clams
08:31have fled because the people were poor. So you don't have clams? Put a sea rock in there and
08:38get the flavor. You get the flavor. Yeah. I mean, delicious.
08:42Yeah. You just have to remember not to eat the rocks. I don't think that would be helpful
08:46on the teeth. Also, we get to look into the making of buffalo mozzarella. And which is really,
08:55as we learned in the series, was Benedictine monks who kind of pioneered making mozzarella
09:02from the milk of buffaloes. And, you know, it's interesting that these monks, I think,
09:08of Dom Perignon in France, they're not spending all their time praying. They're also inventing
09:15delicious beverages in cuisine as well. Yeah. Cheese, beer, other kinds of liquor. They're cultivating.
09:26I mean, it's not a terrible life. It's not bad. In Palermo, you sampled cazzilli. I don't
09:36know if you want to explain to people what cazzilli is, but this tells us something about the inventiveness
09:42and humor. Cazzilli means little penises. And there are these little fried little things that look like
09:50sort of little penises. And, you know, Sicily is quite known for its street food. And that's one of
09:58the many dishes that are little bites that are served with, along with arancini, which are, you
10:06know, rice that's cooked and then fried and then stuffed with whatever you want to stuff it with.
10:14Yeah. And again, the food is our portal into larger questions of culture and identity. We see how
10:22diverse Italy is. Some of that diversity coming in more recent decades of immigrants from Tunisia,
10:28for instance. But there's a great history to this, of course, and certainly nowhere more so than in
10:36Sicily, which has been well traveled by the Greeks, by Arab invaders. And so it's, it's a very rich stew,
10:46if you will. Yeah, all of all of Italy is like that. I mean, Sicily, because it was the most
10:51accessible
10:54from Africa and the Arab world. But then and the Greeks, too. But you have that sort of all the
11:01way up
11:02through the the peninsula. You have the Spanish invasion, you have French invasion, you have Norman
11:08invasion. And, you know, the farther north you were, the more you had people coming from farther
11:18north than that and invading the north. It was it's a fascinating mix of cultures. And therefore,
11:25the food is is really fascinating. Mm hmm. In the first season, we certainly heard you speaking Italian
11:35fairly often. My sense is that you're Italian, which is by my standards, certainly already very
11:41good is is really getting better because you're speaking a lot of Italian here. And as we learned
11:47in the first season, you spent a very formative year of your life in Florence as a kid. I just
11:53found
11:53that fascinating. Yeah, I loved that year. It was 1973. I was 12 about to turn 13. And we moved
12:02to
12:04move to Florence. My dad is a retired art teacher. And he was working, you know, teaching at the time,
12:11but he took a sabbatical for a year and studied at the academia, which is the building that houses
12:18the David now. And he studied sculpture and bronze casting and figure drawing there for a year. And
12:30I was put directly into an Italian school, not speaking Italian at all. And within three months,
12:37you spoke Italian, you didn't really have a choice. It was really informative. And it, you know,
12:43it sort of showed the seeds for me, you know, becoming an ethelophile. If an Italian American
12:53can be an ethelophile. I don't know how it works. But I think so. You're certainly making that of
12:59everyone who may not be of Italian heritage. I think the series is so interesting. And in so many
13:08ways, it's about how to eat in a way, but it's also about how to live. Another way of living.
13:16Yeah, I think Italians, for the most part, do have it. I think this is true of a lot of
13:22Europe,
13:25that Europeans know when to stop. And when Americans don't really know when to stop. And you have to
13:34stop. Because if you stop and sort of look around you and take a few moments, that will enrich you
13:44usually a lot more than your work will enrich you. Your work becomes a habit. And work shouldn't be a
13:51habit. It should be a thing that you love to do. Obviously, you're doing it because you have to make
13:55money and put a roof over your head, you got kids. That's, you know, we all do it. But to
14:00take the time
14:01in between work is what I think the Europeans are very good at, and particularly the Italians.
14:09And you see it in England, too. I live in London. And, you know, if there's a sunny day,
14:14of which there aren't too many, you know, suddenly you look and, you know, you're walking around the
14:19city and, and all of a sudden, the pubs are full. And it's like two o'clock in the afternoon,
14:24you're like,
14:25what happened? And everybody just they just leave their offices, they go to the pub. And then maybe they go
14:30back, or maybe they don't. But it still functions. It's not really a problem.
14:37Is there a dish or two from this season that really you think of as just out of this world
14:44or
14:45ones that you particularly savored? Oh, let me think. Well, honestly, the rock pasta, I know it
14:54sounds silly, but it was like four ingredients. And it was incredible. Incredible. I did not expect
15:04that depth of flavor. Oh, yeah. I mean, and the beautiful kind of a tub. I know that it's served
15:13in that's cooked and served in. Yeah. Yeah, remarkable experience. You said to the chef there,
15:21well, I want to get one of these things. I think that would be rather difficult to pack in your
15:25luggage. But yeah, perhaps you had one sent to you. Your first season, you were Emmy nominated
15:31in two categories, including outstanding nonfiction series or specials. Congratulations on that. And I
15:38would be remiss if I didn't point out that you very recently got your star on the Hollywood Walk of
15:44Fame,
15:44which we want to congratulate you for. Thank you. And thank you for another wonderful season of Tucci
15:52in Italy from National Geographic. It's streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. And we have been joined
15:59by the executive producer and host Stanley Tucci. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Nice to talk to
16:06you.
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