Dan Pashman: This episode contains explicit language.

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CLIP (FELICITY BLUNT): What’re you going to make me?

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): A Negroni. 

CLIP (FELICITY BLUNT): Hmm. 

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): Would you like one?

CLIP (FELICITY BLUNT): I would love one

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): Great, would you mind if I get my wine? 

CLIP (FELICITY BLUNT): No.

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): Thanks.

Dan Pashman: This is actor Stanley Tucci with his wife, Felicity Blunt. In April 2020, about a month after the start of COVID shutdowns, he filmed this video, where he’s making a Negroni at his home in London. 

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): And I’m back. Or so a fair amount of ice in a shaker. Whoops. All right, then what you want is a double shot of gin...

Dan Pashman: Actually, it was Felicity’s idea. She’s the one filming. She thought it would be fun to make a video to send to her work colleagues, a way to cheer them up during lockdown. 

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): A shot of sweet vermouth, and use a good sweet vermouth. A single shot of Campari…

Dan Pashman: And then she says, "Why don’t we put this on Instagram?", and Stanley says, "Sure."

[STIRRING SOUNDS] 

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): Shake it up. 

[SHAKING DRINK] 

Dan Pashman: Maybe it’s the way he shakes the cocktail, or his very tight black polo shirt, or his wry smile when looking at the camera. But when this video was posted, people got excited.

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): And there's that. Now, you want to garnish it with a slice of orange, pre-sliced orange.  

Dan Pashman: One commenter called the video, “the most erotic thing in the world.” Another said, “I want Stanley Tucci to manhandle me the way he slams down his cocktail ingredients.” The reactions only got more graphic from there.

CLIP (STANLEY TUCCI): And there we are. That's that. You want it, Felicity? That will never happen.

Dan Pashman: I gather that you have read some of the comments and reactions that came to your Negroni video. 

Stanley Tucci: Uh-huh. 

Dan Pashman: What did you make of all that? 

Stanley Tucci: I was flattered. I mean, people were so nice and complimentary and, you know, all that sort of sex stuff, too, which we thought was quite lovely. 

[LAUGHING] 

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Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. 

Dan Pashman: This week, I’m talking with Instagram’s favorite bartender: Stanley Tucci. That negroni video turned Stanley from noted actor to the guy everyone wishes they could have dinner with. In his new CNN Show, Searching for Italy, he eats his way across that country. New Yorker writer, Helen Rosner, described it like this:

"He strolls the narrow thoroughfares of Florence and Naples with the physical eloquence of a dancer, at once smoldering and restrained. He gazes at wheels of cheese and swirls of pasta as if the food must be seduced before it will consent to be devoured. Taking a deep whiff of Parmigiano-Reggiano, he moans, he sighs, he murmurs. The whole thing verges on obscene. "

Dan Pashman: It’s been a long road to Stanley Tucci’s role, at age 60, as a keeper of carnal pleasures. In the 90s, you might have seen him in It Could Happen To You or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the 2000s, his profile grew. He was in The Devil Wears Prada, Captain America, Spotlight, and The Hunger Games. 

Dan Pashman: Food has always been a big part of his career. In 1996, he co-wrote, directed and starred in the classic foodie film Big Night. And if you've seen Big Night, you know, that only a person who really loves food could have made that film. We'll get more into it in a little bit. He's also wrote multiple bestselling cookbooks. And now, he’s released a memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food.

Dan Pashman: When he joined me via Zoom from his home in London, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Stanley Tucci has thoughts not only on acting and food, but also on the correct way for the two to come together:

Stanley Tucci: Well, here's the thing, you try to eat as little as possible because you're going to be shooting that scene most likely for 10 hours or some horrible thing. Usually there's a spit bucket. So you take a bite and then you're chewing and then they say, "Cut.", and you go [PTUI] and spit out what's — because you can't do it. You know?

Dan Pashman: Right, right. But I think you would said at one point that you had sort of a pet peeve that when actors or people on food TV take a bite of something that you can kind of tell, they aren't really tasting it sometimes...

Stanley Tucci: Totally. 

Dan Pashman: And what is it about their reaction that you feel like gives that away? 

Stanley Tucci: It’s too fast. It takes a while to really taste something. If I put something in my mouth that I've never tasted before — 

Dan Pashman: There's a second one you're kind of thinking and registering what you're eating. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, there's a moment. There's a pause. You have to take the time for it doesn't take that long.

Dan Pashman: Right, right. 

Stanley Tucci: It's about, what? It's an extra four seconds. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, if that. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: So really your pet peeve is just bad acting on food TV.

Stanley Tucci: Yeah.

[LAUGHING] 

Stanley Tucci: You know, I mean. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, yeah. I've done a little bit of food TV, and I feel like I make all the mistakes that you just outlined, which is number one, I take too big of a bite because I get very excited to eat anything. 

Stanley Tucci: Oh, no, no. 

Dan Pashman: And I'm a — not — I have zero acting skill or experience, so I'm not good at pretending. And I'm very conscious that the cameras are pointed at me. 

Stanley Tucci: Right, yeah. 

Dan Pashman: And so I'm like, OK, here's the spot. Here's the part where I'm supposed to take this bite of this thing and show everyone how good it is. And I just don't know how to do that. So I always feel very foolish. Do you have any tips for me?

Stanley Tucci: Just take a little bite, pause, taste it and then see what happens. Here, I have something right here. 

Dan Pashman: At this point Stanley reaches just out of view of the Zoom.

Stanley Tucci: It's a piece of salami, right? 

Dan Pashman: Of course, Stanley Tucci just happens to have a platter of salami nearby.

Stanley Tucci: So I go — if I go like this? 

Dan Pashman: Tiny bite.

Stanley Tucci: I put it — 

Dan Pashman: Chewing, thinking...

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Pondering

Stanley Tucci: Mmm. Now the flavors — I'm tasting the flavors. If I do this?

Dan Pashman: Small bite. 

Stanley Tucci: Oh my God! That's what they do. It's impossible. 

Dan Pashman: Right, right. Right. 

Stanley Tucci: It's physically impossible.

Dan Pashman: OK, well, this has been Stanley Tucci's Masterclass: How to eat on camera. Thank you so much.

Dan Pashman: Stanley doesn’t just have a lot of experience and opinions about eating on camera. He also has a lot to say about eating once the cameras are off. In his memoir, he writes about meals eaten on film sets all over Europe. And I was like, I want to hear more about that. He says in England, the main staple is sausage on a roll, or as they call it, on a bap.

Stanley Tucci: You can put an egg on it, or a bacon. A bacon butty, I think they call it. And when they're good, they're so good. Oh my God, they're so good.

Dan Pashman: Right, and then when you were filming in France, they have white tablecloths on set? 

Stanley Tucci: That was cool. And that cannot be the way it is all the time. There's no way. But — and this experience with — I was observing Robert Altman make pret-a-porter. 

Dan Pashman: Wow. 

Stanley Tucci: And that's what they had. I mean, they had this huge 18-wheeler that was set up like a big dining room and they had waiters in white jackets and everything. And I was like, what’s happening? It was so weird. And the food was amazing. We had wine. It was great. Yeah. And then Italy — no. Italy's not good, which is weird because everybody just goes out and and eats.

Dan Pashman: But you say in Italy all they — like when you sort of "place your order for lunch", they just ask you what kind of wine you're going to have. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. That's all they say. Do you want red or white. You go red. So you might get a piece of lamb. And if you say white, you get chicken or fish. 

Dan Pashman: So you order the wine and then they pair the food. They pick the food to go with the wine.

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. And you get a little bottle, you know, like you get on the airplane like a little — 

Dan Pashman: Like a little mini bottle. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

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Dan Pashman: Long before Stanley was an international film star, he was a 19-year-old kid, waiting tables at an Italian restaurant in New York. When he started acting, it was first in the theater, and he saw parallels between the theater and the restaurant.

Stanley Tucci: We have backstage, right? Off stage, which would be the kitchen. And then we have onstage, which is the dining room. And the behavior, what's going on backstage and what's going on in the kitchen is the complete opposite of what's happening. On stage and in the dining room, everything is controlled. You know, every cue is being picked up, every mark is being hit, every table's being served properly. And then backstage and in the kitchen, it's a fucking — it's like an asylum.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Stanley Tucci: And that? I love that. I love that. You know, you'd be backstage going, I can't get this on. I can't get — my fucking belt is caught in — I'm trying to get it on. And you it on. You go, I got it. I got to go. And then you walk out and go, "Hello, my dear. I'm so glad. You thought I'd never come back, but I'm back." You know what I mean?

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: That dynamic basically describes Stanley’s character in Big Night. It’s widely considered to be one of the greatest food movies of all time, and as I said, Stanley co-wrote it. The film is set in the 1950s. Stanley’s character, Secondo, and his brother, played by Tony Shaloub, are Italian immigrants. They own a restaurant on the Jersey Shore. Stanley’s character manages the front of the house and he’s constantly arguing with his brother, who’s a great chef who refuses to cook the Americanized Italian food that their customers want. 

CLIP (SECONDO): Primo, please. Just make me a side order of spaghetti please. 

CLIP (PRIMO): I wonder who's it for. 

CLIP (SECONDO): For the lady with the risotto. 

CLIP (PRIMO): What? Why?

CLIP (SECONDO): That's what she wants. That is what the customer asks for. 

CLIP (PRIMO): How can she want it? They both are starch. Maybe, I should make a mashed potato for her on the other side. 

CLIP (SECONDO): Primo, look. Don't, OK? Because they are the first customer to come in two hours...

CLIP (PRIMO): No. She's a criminal. I want to talk to her...

Dan Pashman: So Stanley’s character is in the kitchen, screaming at his brother, and then he transforms into a charming host as soon as he walks into the dining room. But business is not going well, and they need a way to turn things around. They hear that the famous singer, Louis Prima, is coming to their restaurant. So they decide to spend a bunch of money and throw a big party, hoping it’ll attract customers. It’s their last chance to save the restaurant, but it doesn’t go as planned. The brothers have a huge fight and by the next morning, it looks like they might have lost everything. 

Dan Pashman: The film ends with you cooking a frittata in silence. It's one shot, no cuts. What kind of preparation did you do to shoot that scene?

Stanley Tucci: I mean, two years prior to that or more, I learned how to do that. I learned how to make the frittata sort of looked like I'd been doing it my whole life. It’s incredibly simple. It's egg, oil, salt, bread. That's it. And there's a lot of nourishment in there, too. And it's the only time you see my character eat throughout the entire film. He never eats.

Dan Pashman: That's true. I hadn't — it had not occurred to me, but you're right. 

Stanley Tucci: He only drinks because he's a wreck. So he never touched his food.

Dan Pashman: And the fact that that your character and Tony Shlub's character end up physically right next to each other with their arms over each other, like that's — that tells you all you need to know about the final scene.

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: I mean, not all you need to know but that's — it's that physical connection that concludes the movie. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. It's the only time they touch each other, too. It's not — it's very different than most movies about Italians, where they're always hugging each other.... No. These guys are — they never touch each other. They never hug each other only until the very end. And they don't even hug. They sort of tentatively pat each other's shoulders and sort of put the arm out and rested there kind of uncomfortably because that's more truthful.

Dan Pashman: That frittata scene at the end is really beautiful, but when most people think of Big Night, they think about a different dish: Timpano. It’s layers of pasta, meat, cheese, sauce, eggs, and more, all wrapped in dough. When it comes out of the pot it’s the size of a slightly deflated basketball. 

Dan Pashman: In the film, when they serve the timpano to everyone at the party, all conversation stops. People are blown away. 

Dan Pashman: There are still articles about the timpano from Big Night coming out now, more than twenty years after the film. One YouTube video of how to replicate it has nearly 7 million views. Dr. Fauci loved Big Night so much that he makes Timpano every Christmas. I think you get the idea. Everyone seems to love Timpano from Big Night, Right? Well It's also a Christmas tradition in the Tucci household. But that doesn’t mean everyone's a fan. 

Stanley Tucci: Uh, a lot of people don't like it. That's a very strong flavor and it's incredibly heavy. I love it. It's just — like, the amount of salt in it? I mean, it's a killer that recipe but I find it delicious. Kate did not care for it. 

Dan Pashman: Kate is Stanley’s late wife. She died 12 years ago of cancer. When he met his current wife, Felicity, he was hoping she would have a different opinion on the Timpano.

Stanley Tucci: And Felicity doesn't care for it either. 

Dan Pashman: Oh, no!

[LAUGHING]

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, because you can't time the rest of the meal. It's very hard to time like a goose or a ham or whatever cause the timpano’s is very fickle, so you just never know when it's going to be ready. It has to rest and this and this… You know? 

Dan Pashman: It's funny. Sometimes I think of certain foods as being like a dish that should be the star or like an ingredient within a dish that is the star of that dish. And then other times I think of a food that's more like an ensemble cast. 

Stanley Tucci: Hmm. 

Dan Pashman: You see timpano as like the star of the meal and Felicity is more wants an ensemble cast. She wants Ocean's Eleven, you know, at Christmas.

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, yeah. Timpano’s a one man show. 

Dan Pashman: Right, right. It's a really long monologue. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. It's like, it's like a Beckett piece. 

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: You talked a bit about about Kate. What was the role of food in your relationship with her?

Stanley Tucci: Well, from the time we had our first date, I realized that she really loved food and she was a really good cook. We both loved cooking and eating and throwing dinner parties and having parties on the weekends, having people over. We loved it. 

Dan Pashman: Are there certain foods that still remind you of her? 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, we have some of them in the cookbook that Felicity and I did. It was Felicity suggestion that we put in some of Kate's recipes, like her baked beans and these barbecued chicken wings, that she used to make that were delicious, that I can never make quite like she did. But stuff like that, her blueberry muffins and things like that. She was really — sh was really a good cook. 

Dan Pashman: Food is also a big part of his relationship with Felicity. When they were first dating, she made her grandmother’s English roasted potatoes for him.

Stanley Tucci: Felicity said, I'll make some roast potatoes. I'm like, yeah, great. And she took these potatoes. She peeled them. She boiled them. Then she dumped out the water and she shook them in the pot with the top on. And so they get all this kind of like fluffy edges, craggy edges. And then she puts them in a tray of goose fat. Then she carefully puts them in and sticks them in the oven. But the oven is smoking like crazy. It was like — I was like, "What are you doing?". My, you know, — like people —like alarms are going off and she goes, "I'm making roast potatoes." 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Stanley Tucci: And it's like, what? She goes, this is the way we make them in England. This is what you have for a Sunday. It's her grandmother's recipe. And then we ate them. And what happens to them is, I don't know if you know, but they get this crunchy crispiness on the outside and then inside they're soft. So it's almost like, I think Ina Garten said the other day, she goes, we were talking about them because Emily, my sister-in-law, made them for Ina. And so it's like a French fry, like a chip, you know, what they call a chip here, on the outside. And then the inside is almost like a mashed potato. It's — excuse me, but they are fucking incredible. 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: That sounds really good. Right. It's about that contrast in textures. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. Yeah, and especially you can do them on vegetable oil, but to do them in like goose fat or something, it's like even better. 

Dan Pashman: Right. Plus, it's just more fun. 

Stanley Tucci: It's more fun. Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: To say like, we could be in goose fat. It's just sort of like, I mean, you know, you're basically royalty at that point. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: You're like, it just feels so decadent. 

Stanley Tucci: So decadent. Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: It just, you know, you feel like you're treating yourself. 

Stanley Tucci: I want to cook them in swan fat. 

[LAUGHING] 

Stanley Tucci: Truly royal. 

Dan Pashman: Right. Right. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. Yeah. 

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Dan Pashman: Clearly, food is a huge part of Stanley Tucci's life and his work. He’s known as a public figure who takes a lot of pleasure in food. But as he recently revealed, a few years ago, all that was nearly erased because Stanley almost lost the ability to taste altogether. We'll have that story after the break. Stick around. 

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+++BREAK+++

 

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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful. I’m Dan Pashman and I’m getting ready to share some big pasta news! If you want all the latest updates as soon as they come in? Make sure you’re following me on Instagram, I’m @TheSporkful. You can follow me right now, while you’re listening @TheSporkful Instagram. Thanks.

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Dan Pashman: Now back to my conversation with Stanley Tucci, whose new memoir is, Taste: My Life Through Food. The book is full of stories from his career and meals eaten along the way. It also includes a new revelation, something he hadn’t talked about publicly before. Four years ago, he started to feel a pain in his jaw. A dentist told him that it was a tumor on the base of his tongue, and that it might be cancerous.

Stanley Tucci: I almost fainted because, you know, I watched my wife die of cancer and I watched her suffer through all the indignity of the horrible treatments. And I had vowed, were I ever to get cancer, that I wouldn't do standard of care. 

Dan Pashman: Standard of care means the standard or recommended treatment, which in this case was radiation and chemotherapy. So Stanley put off getting it examined for months. When he finally did, the dentist confirmed that it was oral cancer. The tumor had gotten so big that surgery wasn’t possible. Stanley was told that radiation and chemo were the only option. Still, because of his late wife, Kate’s experience, he was reluctant.

Stanley Tucci: But Felicity and the doctor that we ended up talking to at Mount Sinai in New York convinced me that it was indeed the right thing to do, and when you looked at the statistics of this particular cancer — also, the fact that it had not metastasized, which was a miracle, the cure rate was so high that you were like you sort of be an idiot if you didn't do it. Um, so I did it. 

Dan Pashman: For seven weeks, nearly every day, his head, neck, and shoulders were pinned down. He had to bite on a block to keep his mouth and tongue completely still as he received radiation and chemo.

Stanley Tucci: Doing that radiation is so damaging to you that your saliva disappears, your mouth is filled with ulcers and hypersensitive for months and months and months and months. You lose your taste buds. Actually, I wish I lost my taste buds.

Dan Pashman: He writes in his memoir that after weeks of treatment, anything he ate tasted like wet cardboard or worse. 

Stanley Tucci: And I had a feeding tube. I couldn't even drink water it hurt so much. You’re on morphine. You're on fentanyl or whatever that stuff is. I lost thirty, thirty-five pounds, something like that. I mean, you're completely atrophied. You're laying in bed for months and months at a time. you're so nauseous that you can't even think about moving. I couldn't read. I couldn't do anything. It was bad. It was bad. [LAUGHS] It was bad. 

Dan Pashman: When you were laid up and in such in — and like you said, in pain, unable to eat or drink or enjoy any kind of food, like, did you think about food? Were there food you were missing? 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, I missed everything, but I couldn't bear it. If anybody came in and they had eaten and I smelled it on them, I would — I'd have to say, get out of the room. Don't — it was bad.

Dan Pashman: But did you say that you would sometimes watch cooking shows?

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, I watched cooking shows when I was in the hospital, when I was getting — I'd go every day for treatment and then every few days I'd have to get fluids to stay hydrated. And I would just watch cooking shows, which is weird. 

Dan Pashman: Well, you say it’s weird, but I think it actually makes a certain amount of sense. There's this famous experiment called The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, it was back in the 1940s and they had these men who volunteered to be subjected to extreme starvation. And they became obsessed with food to the point that several of them, even after the experiment was over and they were able to go back to eating whatever they wanted, a lot of them actually switched careers and went into the food industry in some way. 

Stanley Tucci: What? 

Dan Pashman: So the obsession with food didn't end, even after they were no longer deprived. 

Stanley Tucci: Whoa, that’s amazing. That’s really interesting. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, right? 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, yeah. Well, it makes sense. I mean, I couldn't get enough of it because I wanted to be there again. You know? And if I couldn't have it have it, at least I could watch it. 

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Dan Pashman: After the feeding tube was removed, Stanley needed speech therapy, and for two years, he still couldn’t eat anything spicy or drink anything carbonated. His mouth was too sensitive. He still wasn’t producing enough saliva to eat certain other foods. All kinds of things he used to eat suddenly became choking hazards. Even today, he still has to be careful. 

Stanley Tucci: This this piece of salami and a cracker. [LAUGHS] That's a very bold move for me to attempt to eat them to this day, three years later, because it's not — there's no moisture. So the salami has moisture from the fat. Right? But this is like — 

Dan Pashman: The cracker is dry. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: Do you remember the moment that you ate a meal and were able to enjoy it in a way that you hadn't been able to enjoy it for so long? 

Stanley Tucci: I think, it was probably going to this restaurant near my house where he makes a nice gnocchi with pesto and string beans. And it was nice because it is quite moist and the gnocchi is very soft. And I could really taste everything. And I was with my friend Colin Firth. We went and it was very exciting. [LAUGHS] And it worked. I tasted it and I was able to swallow. It took a while, but I did it. 

Dan Pashman: And so but when you had that first meal where you're like, I'm back. How did that feel? 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah, you're back but you know, you're not back.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Stanley Tucci: You know, you're not. Because it's sort of the next day, you can't do it. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Stanley Tucci: But the next day you can. It's very, very slow. Tiny baby steps to get there. 

Dan Pashman: Is there a food out there that sort of like your holy grail, that like you still don't feel like you've worked your way up to be able to enjoy, but like, one of these days, then you'll really know you're 100 percent? 

Stanley Tucci: I would love to be able — and I've done it a little bit — but I'd love to be able to have like a really nice aged t-bone steak and just sort of tear into it.

[LAUGHING] 

Stanley Tucci: And just really eat it. Just talk and eat, as opposed to taking it very carefully, chewing it, making sure there has enough sauce or whatever, and then — you know, because it takes me a while to get through that. 

Dan Pashman: So things for Stanley are still not 100 percent normal. But his cancer treatment has been successful, and he can get pleasure and comfort, from food again. And, from drinks. It took a long time but he can enjoy his beloved martinis again. In fact, on movie sets, that’s the drink he’s best known for. He travels with his own martini kit. When the negroni video went viral, Chris Evans shared it on Twitter, writing, “I. Love. Stanley. Tucci.  Most days after we finished filming on the first Captain America movie, Stanley would make us martinis in his trailer. He’s an absolute gem.” I asked Stanley to share his recipe.

Stanley Tucci: It's really simple. You just take like a half a shot of good vermouth, dry vermouth, put it in a beaker of ice — filled with ice. Give it a good stir. Let it sit, give it a good stir. Dump it out. Put in your vodka or your gin, a few shots. Stir it, sit, stir it, sit, stir it, sit. Pour it. Garnish. That's it.

Dan Pashman: So but you're really just like barely coating the inside of the shaker with vermouth. 

Stanley Tucci: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: You're not actually pouring any directly into the drink. 

Stanley Tucci: Nom unless people want it but I prefer it that way. 

Dan Pashman: At the end of a day of shooting, Stanley doesn’t just make martinis for Captain America.

Stanley Tucci: I love being in the makeup trailer. Like, it's fun. Everybody's chatting and you're making jokes and getting ready and whatever. And then at the end of the day, you go into the makeup trailer, you get your stuff off. You're chatting about the day. You're chatting about this, whatever's going on. And then you make a cocktail in there and it's nice. Or I invite — you know, people who come into the trailer and, you know, have a drink before they before they go home. And it's really nice. Just a nice way to end the day.

Dan Pashman: Yeah, it is a nice way to end the day. Is there a part of having that drink at the end of a day of shooting that is part of kind of like getting out of your character for you?

Stanley Tucci: When I was doing this one movie? Yeah, because it was really painful to do the movie, The Lovely Bones. 

Dan Pashman: In The Lovely Bones, Stanley plays a serial killer. So it’s a dark film.

Stanley Tucci: And you just needed, um — yeah. you just needed it. Once you take all the makeup off and all the stuff I had on the fat suit and the teeth and the whatever, all that sort of awful awfulness that you are accessing. You have a cocktail while you're doing that and it's just — everything just disappears. 

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Dan Pashman: That’s Stanley Tucci. His memoir is Taste: My Life Through Food. And check out his CNN show, Searching For Italy. 

Dan Pashman: Coming up next week, I go hunting for pawpaws. They taste like something tropical, but they’re actually North America’s largest native fruit. It’s nearly impossible to find them in stores, and there’s a whole subculture of pawpaw nerds who share secrets on where to forage for them and the best ways to use them. We're gonna dig deep on that next week. 

Dan Pashman: And if you’re looking for more Sporkful episodes to listen to, check out last week’s episode, where I go to Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville. You know, hot chicken’s become a hot trend, but when a food invented by Black people becomes so popular, who benefits? We explore that question and more in last week's show up now wherever you got this one.