Stanley Tucci is delighting fans on the big screen as the stylish Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada 2and returns to the small screen with Season 2 of his food-and-travel show, Tucci in Italy, on Nat Geo on May 15.

Like Season 1, the follow-up to the Emmy-Award winning (Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special), Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, Tucci in Italy sees the American actor-director visit five regions in Italy — Naples and Campania, Sicily, Le Marche, Sardinia, and Veneto (where he weighs in on the origins of tiramisu!)

Tucci, who made his acting debut in the black comedy Prizzi’s Honor (1985) went on to act in several films and franchises, including The Hunger Games where he plays the blue-haired master of ceremonies Caesar Flickerman (a character Tucci has joked resembles tiramisu) and as the serial killer George Harvey in Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones  (2009) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

More recently, he played Cardinal Bellini in Edward Berger’s Conclave. He has also directed films such as Big Night and Joe Gould’s Secret.

ALSO READ: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review: Meryl Streep and the Runway gang try to jumpstart a mostly inert sequel

Apart from writing The Tucci Cookbook, The Tucci Table: Cooking With Family and Friends, Taste: My Life Through Food, and What I Ate in One Year, and hosting a food-and-travel series, Tucci has worked extensively on the small screen as well. He received an Emmy nomination for his role as Jack L Warner in Feud and appeared as Bernard Orlick in the spy thriller Citadel, starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. 

Family first

The 65-year-old actor sees a similarity between India and Italy in the fondness for food and family. “I’ve never been to India, but from everything I’ve heard, there are similarities, from the importance of family to the importance of sharing food, and the diverse, dialects and traditions throughout the country,” Tucci says over a video call from New York.

“India is a huge country,” Tucci hastens to add, “While Italy is only about 60 million people. Italians eat together, maybe more than any other culture. They certainly eat together a lot more than Americans or the British.”

Tucci, who is married to his The Devil Wears Prada co-star Emily Blunt’s sister, Felicity, adds, “The British will come together on a Sunday for a roast, but the majority of people in Britain do not sit down to dinner all the time, because both parents are working, or for whatever reason. After World War II, that started to become the norm in so many countries.”

A time to decompress

Italy, Tucci says, has maintained the tradition of eating together, although it is starting to fade. “It’s absolutely important because it’s a time to decompress. It’s a time to interact with one another, even if that interaction might be people having an argument over the table, at least you’re interacting,” he says, laughing gently.

“It gives you time to connect with one another, and separates you from the daily grind. It’s a nice way to commune with people you love.”

Getting comfortable

This season, Tucci says is a more personal journey. “Every time you go, you’re discovering more and more. Over the years, I’ve become more comfortable doing the show. Sometimes revisiting places has an emotional effect on you because you’re drawn to places that make you feel happy.”

Sardinia forever

The series draws a clear line between landscape, history, and the food on the plate. While saying that no one region stood out above the others, Sardinia holds a special place in Tucci’s heart.

“It is interesting because it’s almost like a different world, not even a different country. It feels and is older than old. There are all these ions and myths and ancient sagas of Sardinian culture that go back thousands of years. There were people living there 7,000 years ago, that’s pretty amazing. There’s a lot to unpack there.”

Le Marche and Sardinia also required a different kind of listening, Tucci says. “Everywhere you go in Italy, the dialects are so distinctly different that even if you speak some Italian, like I do, you can be hard-pressed to understand what people are saying. There’s a depth to Sardinia that you could keep digging into forever, discovering more and more things. It’s so interesting to me. Even the mafia had a difficult time trying to get a foothold in Sardinia, because they are incredibly tough people.”

Though Naples and Sicily carry heavy histories alongside exuberant food cultures, Tucci does not see the regions as different from any other part of Italy. “Every country and every part of Italy has a dark history.”

Learning to listen

Stepping back and letting other people tell their stories took some getting used to for Tucci. “I had to learn how to do it. I was nervous when I first started doing this about six, seven years ago. Once you do it, you just know it’s the right thing to do. They’re the ones who have to tell the story. I’m just the conduit.”

Talking about the production, Tucci says, “A lot of times you get a producer who might say, ‘Ask for this,’ or, ‘Have her say that again,’ and it doesn’t work. There are certain bullet points we want to hit in an interview, but I need to let the person keep talking until they get there. They’re not performers. They might be nervous in front of the camera, so you have to be aware of that.”

Language matters

A lot of times, Tucci says, the producers might say, “‘Why do they have to speak in Italian?’ Because they’re Italian, that’s why,” he laughs. “Even though they say they can speak English, they can’t really speak English, and they’ll be uncomfortable, and we’ll be here for days, and then they won’t be happy, and we won’t get the story we want. So then let them talk in Italian, and that’s it.”

The takeaway from the series Tucci hopes for is for people to see how culturally diverse and complex Italy is. “There’s no such thing as an Italian.”

Tucci in Italy streams on JioHotstar, with Season 2 episodes airing every Friday at 7 pm on Nat Geo