Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and this is next question.
Speaker 1: If you know me, and many of you probably do
Speaker 1: by now, you know that twenty three years ago I
Speaker 1: lost my husband Jay to calling cancer when he was
Speaker 1: just forty two or it's of course, we'll never describe
Speaker 1: how devastating this loss has been for me and my
Speaker 1: daughters and all of Jay's family as well, but the
Speaker 1: heartfelt and compassionate letters and cards that so many of
Speaker 1: you sent to me. Perhaps you also know that after
Speaker 1: his death, I dedicated much of my time to raising
Speaker 1: money for cancer research and spreading the word about the
Speaker 1: importance of getting screened. Hi, everybody, Here we are in
Speaker 1: my kitchen. It's about eighteen hours plus before I get
Speaker 1: my first call Inoscopy, and I also co founded with
Speaker 1: the number of other strong willed women, Stand Up to Cancer.
Speaker 1: It's been incredibly gratifying, but losing a partner and losing
Speaker 1: the father of my daughters isn't something you ever really
Speaker 1: get over, and frankly, it was and still is hard
Speaker 1: to explain to anyone who hasn't gone through it how
Speaker 1: excruciating it is to watch someone you love deteriorate. No,
Speaker 1: they can't know what it's like they can never know
Speaker 1: what it's like. Stanley Tucci understands. He lost his wife
Speaker 1: Kate to breast cancer in two thousand nine and became
Speaker 1: a member of a unique club of widows and widowers
Speaker 1: people who understand. So when I recently interviewed Stanley about
Speaker 1: his charming new memoir called Taste My Life Through Food,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask him about his own recently disclosed
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis, as well as our shared experience of losing
Speaker 1: our partners and co parents. Stanley and Kate had three
Speaker 1: kids together when their mom was diagnosed. She was diagnosed
Speaker 1: at stage four I mean, which unfortunately is is too common,
Speaker 1: and there was you know, she struggled for four years.
Speaker 1: My husband was diagnosed at stage four two. It was
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just so sick and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, only live for nine months. So I totally
Speaker 1: relate to that. And you keep thinking, well, you have
Speaker 1: to be really really sick to get really really to
Speaker 1: get well. But you keep hoping against hope that well, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll be that small percentage of people who respond,
Speaker 1: or maybe a new treatment will come along that will
Speaker 1: also you know, keep you going until an even better
Speaker 1: treatment comes along. Um. I write a lot about that
Speaker 1: in my book and how I was sort of in
Speaker 1: death denial. But we'll talk about that another time we
Speaker 1: are I was. I was too. I was completely in
Speaker 1: death denial, even though you know you see it coming,
Speaker 1: you know what's going to happen, but you just don't
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge it. And I think there's something weird
Speaker 1: about protecting the person, and then you wonder is it
Speaker 1: is it protecting them or is it misleading them? And
Speaker 1: you know, I have all sorts of regrets about that, UM,
Speaker 1: but I think it's pretty common actually, that it's it's
Speaker 1: too hard to face face reality. And I think as
Speaker 1: a society or even the medical profession needs to needs
Speaker 1: to help people. Because I always thought if we talked
Speaker 1: about Jay's death, that meant we were giving up hope,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't. I felt like to rob him
Speaker 1: of hope would rob him of any any small pleasures
Speaker 1: he was getting out of his life. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you felt that way too. I did, of course
Speaker 1: I felt that I feel exactly the same way. And
Speaker 1: in the end, you know, the person who's sick is
Speaker 1: the person who is most truthful. And it was very hard.
Speaker 1: She she knew. I mean, she knew. And there was
Speaker 1: this one moment that was very specific when we came
Speaker 1: out of this one doctor's office and you know, they
Speaker 1: had shown that there were lesions on her brain, and
Speaker 1: we both just knew that sort of that was it
Speaker 1: was making that its natural progression, the disease, and at
Speaker 1: the last place it goes as the brain. And so
Speaker 1: we had been incapable of stopping that. And when we
Speaker 1: sat in the car and you know, she started crying
Speaker 1: and she said, I want to die, and I said,
Speaker 1: I know, I know you're not going to die. And
Speaker 1: then you just keep moving forward from there. But I
Speaker 1: knew that most likely, yes, she would die, and she knew,
Speaker 1: and yet you couldn't discuss it. No, we discussed it
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, and then you know, then we
Speaker 1: moved on and we did keep we would talk about it,
Speaker 1: but you can only talk about it for so long.
Speaker 1: And then and I remember going and talking about her
Speaker 1: will and life insurance and all that stuff with the lawyer,
Speaker 1: and it was just terrible. And she was very matter
Speaker 1: of fact about it, because you had because she had
Speaker 1: to be anyway. Anyway, I was sort of I was
Speaker 1: sort of a practitioner and of toxic positivity. You know,
Speaker 1: like Jay had brain mets too, uh, And I remember
Speaker 1: we went to the doctor. Yeah, he had Uh. It
Speaker 1: traveled from north it was marching northward from his liver
Speaker 1: to his long He had a tumor on the back
Speaker 1: of his eye, and then he had brain mets in
Speaker 1: pretty short order. And every time, you know, the cancer
Speaker 1: would further metastasize, I would say, don't worry, we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out, or okay, we'll get radiation. And it was
Speaker 1: just the only way I knew how to keep going.
Speaker 1: Of course, and here's the thing is that we can
Speaker 1: say that, oh, we're giving the person false hope, or
Speaker 1: we're giving ourselves false hope. But how else, how else
Speaker 1: do you go on? If you just give up, If
Speaker 1: you just give up, what happens, what happens to the kids,
Speaker 1: what happens to the person who's sick? You can't. You
Speaker 1: have to keep trying. Unfortunately, we don't have the science,
Speaker 1: We don't have the tools to save anybody who's suffering
Speaker 1: like that, so we we but we implement them anyway,
Speaker 1: and that in some ways makes it even worse, because
Speaker 1: there is no point to doing whole brain radiation. What
Speaker 1: would be the point of that it doesn't work right?
Speaker 1: What would be the point of you have eleven lesions
Speaker 1: on your brain, We're going to target each one of them,
Speaker 1: but we know it's basically going to come back. So
Speaker 1: we have to get to a point where the medical
Speaker 1: community and the victims and their families make it, make
Speaker 1: decisions together and not just go, oh no, we're gonna
Speaker 1: just do this whole brain radiation with you and completely
Speaker 1: kill your is it your make delay for word so
Speaker 1: that what happens is then from what I was told,
Speaker 1: there's no connection between your body and your brain. So
Speaker 1: the whole thing falls apart. And that's because of the radiation.
Speaker 1: So why do you do it? Why are we doing it?
Speaker 1: And and not to mention in certain countries like America,
Speaker 1: the expense of it and that is really disturbing. We
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way, first of all, to
Speaker 1: cure it. Second of all that people need to be
Speaker 1: able to make a decision and go I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that because it can make it even worse.
Speaker 1: And some people do, but I think more often than
Speaker 1: not people die trying. Right there, you go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, Katie, I'm so sorry. I know it's been
Speaker 1: a long time for you, m h and for me too,
Speaker 1: but you never you never get over it. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we dive into Stanley's memoir, his passion for food,
Speaker 1: and his own cancer diagnosis that's right after this. In
Speaker 1: addition to all of his acting accolades, Stanley Tucci is
Speaker 1: the author of two cookbooks, The Tucci Cookbook and The
Speaker 1: Tucci Table, which he co wrote with his wife, Felicity Blunt.
Speaker 1: The two married in and have two children together. Stanley
Speaker 1: knows his way around food writing, so when the book
Speaker 1: publisher Simon and Schuster approached him to write another book,
Speaker 1: he figured he had it covered. I always thought that
Speaker 1: it would sort of take the form of observations, musings,
Speaker 1: some experiences, some recipes, um. And then when I when
Speaker 1: I spoke to them, when I spoke bok to them,
Speaker 1: they said, they said, you know, don't we would really
Speaker 1: like to have like a memoir. And I was like,
Speaker 1: what you talk I can't do that. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. And they said, well, would you give
Speaker 1: it a try and see, because just try it. So
Speaker 1: I tried it and and that, and I ended up
Speaker 1: with this, but so It was never my intention really
Speaker 1: to write a memoir. What was it like the process
Speaker 1: for you? Well, it was It was strange because I
Speaker 1: I felt like I kept saying the felicity. I kept saying,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that I really have enough
Speaker 1: to say, and I think I'm I only have this
Speaker 1: many pages. You know, I don't have had nothing left.
Speaker 1: I don't know. If she goes, stand stop it, think
Speaker 1: about when remember the story you told me about the
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But you remember when you told me
Speaker 1: that when you were young and this happened and you
Speaker 1: were that thing that your mother made and the blah
Speaker 1: blah blah or what about the And I said, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think that would be interesting? She goes yes, So
Speaker 1: I just go back and write, you know, but it
Speaker 1: was great. I really needed her to to help me, because, well,
Speaker 1: you doubt yourself and you're afraid of boring people. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the book, because I know you use
Speaker 1: food really too as the engine for the narrative instead
Speaker 1: of film, which obviously has played an equally important role
Speaker 1: in your life. And I wondered about that until I
Speaker 1: came to the last chapter and I read about you know,
Speaker 1: your cancer diagnosis. I don't want to dwell on it,
Speaker 1: because I imagine Stanley, you don't want to dwell on it.
Speaker 1: But it was pretty shocking when I read that. How
Speaker 1: did that inform sort of what you wrote, even though
Speaker 1: you would always plan to write about food. Did it
Speaker 1: take a different tenor or tone as a result of
Speaker 1: what you had experienced which sounds absolutely awful by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty awful. I'm not gonna lie. Uh, and anybody
Speaker 1: who's been through it, and then a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been through this kind of cancer. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very unpleasant. And you know I still suffer
Speaker 1: from the the effects of the radiation. Well, I still
Speaker 1: can't eat everything I want to eat. I certainly can't
Speaker 1: eat anything spicy. I have difficulty. I still don't have
Speaker 1: enough saliva. So you can't just sort of go, I'll
Speaker 1: eat that sandwich. You know, eating that sandwich takes quite
Speaker 1: a while, so you're constantly drinking water and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to have enough from some sort of condiment to
Speaker 1: help you through it. Um, and certain things you can eat,
Speaker 1: no problem, that's not a problem. So you know, as
Speaker 1: I said in the book, I lived mostly on a
Speaker 1: vegetarian diet for a long time because I couldn't eat
Speaker 1: meat on so it's mostly soft foods and all that.
Speaker 1: And it's still, it's still. I have to gravitate towards
Speaker 1: towards that. And you had it, which is which is fine.
Speaker 1: It was a tumor, a squamous cell tumor at the
Speaker 1: base of your tongue. Yeah, and your jaw started hurting
Speaker 1: like excruciating right painted your jaw. Yeah, for two years.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you get it checked before? Well? I did.
Speaker 1: The problem is it was missed, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how it was missed. I had a prominent U E
Speaker 1: n t here look at it. Uh, I had I
Speaker 1: had to scan. I had um a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who's a neurosurgeon and a colleague of his in New York.
Speaker 1: I had done all over the world and it was missed.
Speaker 1: And then eventually I was like, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: what this is. I was getting acupuncture, it was getting
Speaker 1: the sun as it was doing all these things, and
Speaker 1: suddenly that finally the tumor just got so big that
Speaker 1: I was sent to this fee sent me to this
Speaker 1: guy was a salivary gland doctor. But obviously deals with cancer,
Speaker 1: and he just opened up my mouth and within a
Speaker 1: second he went, oh my god, you're this huge tumor.
Speaker 1: Um So, I hadn't had a scan for quite a
Speaker 1: while and the original scan missed it. Um So anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: it was unfortunate, but it was fortunate in the sense
Speaker 1: that we got it in time and that it had
Speaker 1: not metastasized. It was fortunate, and I mean I was
Speaker 1: so relieved. You know, Um, there are so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of cancers, with so many different kind of prognoses.
Speaker 1: And the fact that the treatment you had at Mount Sinai,
Speaker 1: which was radiation very specific to the region and chemotherapy
Speaker 1: I read, had a success rate. Thank god. Um, that's
Speaker 1: the good news. Getting there, however, was not half the fun,
Speaker 1: because it was extremely excruciating the treatment with the radiation
Speaker 1: and the chemo, and it was a two year treatment, Stanley,
Speaker 1: Is that right? No, no, no, no, The treatment was
Speaker 1: only thirty five days. The the result of the treatment,
Speaker 1: the effects of the treatment three years on now, so
Speaker 1: it's three over three years since I finished treatment and
Speaker 1: I'm still not back to normal. What what were some
Speaker 1: of the what were some of the side effects you
Speaker 1: lose your taste and smell. But you don't lose it.
Speaker 1: What happens is everything that you smell on, everything that
Speaker 1: you taste tastes like you know what, and to the
Speaker 1: point where you can't. Um. You can't. If someone has
Speaker 1: eaten and they've walked in to the room, you have
Speaker 1: to just say, get out of the room. I can't
Speaker 1: stand it. Oh no, you can't. If you open the refrigerator.
Speaker 1: Normally you open a refrigerator, what do you smell? You know,
Speaker 1: unless something is open, it's been there for what do
Speaker 1: you smell? Nothing? It's a refrigerator keeps things cooled. The
Speaker 1: odors get sort of numbed, right. I opened a refrigerator
Speaker 1: at that point, and when I'm getting through treatment and
Speaker 1: finishing treatment, and it was, as I wrote in the book,
Speaker 1: a wall of stink. It was incredible. I couldn't be
Speaker 1: near anything that, no matter what it was. UM. I
Speaker 1: was so nauseous that I could just all I could
Speaker 1: do was lay in bed. I was so nauseous from
Speaker 1: the radiation. You're in terrible pain because it's destroying all
Speaker 1: the seft tissue in your mouth, and you have you're
Speaker 1: riddled with ulcers. UM plus you're just in pain, so
Speaker 1: you're taking morphine, you're on fentanyl patches. You can't swallow
Speaker 1: even water, so you have to then hydrate yourself, either
Speaker 1: through intravenous or I finally had a feeding tube put
Speaker 1: in after five weeks, and I stayed with that feeding
Speaker 1: tube for six months. You lost thirty pounds and you
Speaker 1: needed to get nourishments. So you had that kind of
Speaker 1: feeding tube that you put I think that it's called
Speaker 1: something like a peg, like a peg or something, and
Speaker 1: I can't remember something like that. So you had to
Speaker 1: get get nourishment through a feeding tube. And you know,
Speaker 1: as I hear you describe this, Stanley, it's like such
Speaker 1: a cruel irony for someone who gets so much pleasure
Speaker 1: from food, whose very existence seems to be colored in
Speaker 1: the most beautiful way by food and drink. And um,
Speaker 1: did that strike you at the time, like w T
Speaker 1: F Yeah, yeah, hello, I mean really, any other part
Speaker 1: of me please take it, you know, but not that,
Speaker 1: Please not that. And I thought I was so afraid.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'm never going to be able to
Speaker 1: eat again. I'm never gonna be able to share a
Speaker 1: great meal, to cook a great meal with my family,
Speaker 1: and or friends. That is really my my life, my life.
Speaker 1: Um So, Also, it was quite ironic that CNN came
Speaker 1: to me and I was just like six months out
Speaker 1: of treatment and CNN came to me and said, do
Speaker 1: you have any ideas for a show, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have this idea. And I had three different ideas
Speaker 1: and they were all involved. One was about cancer, the
Speaker 1: other was about uh refugees and food, and then I
Speaker 1: gave them this idea was an idea I've had for
Speaker 1: a long time. I'm Stanley Tucci, I'm Italian on both sides,
Speaker 1: and I'm traveling across Italy to discover how the food
Speaker 1: in each of this country's twenty regions is as unique
Speaker 1: as the people in their past. You know, we made
Speaker 1: the deal, we found a production because we started making
Speaker 1: it and there I am shooting in Italy and I'm
Speaker 1: still not able to eat a lot of stuff. I
Speaker 1: can taste everything at that point, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that I still can't swallow. So I started
Speaker 1: to show like a little over a year after treatment,
Speaker 1: and I honestly don't even know how I did it.
Speaker 1: Were you faking it? Where you were in some instances
Speaker 1: where you like, oh that's really good. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I could taste it, so I didn't. There was never
Speaker 1: a lie there. But there's no question that they had to.
Speaker 1: They would. I would ask them to cut away, or
Speaker 1: I would turn myself away and I have to take
Speaker 1: something out of my mouth because I was going to
Speaker 1: choke on it. That's insane, Stanley terrible. Was it? Was
Speaker 1: it therapeutic though, doing that documentary series, because I don't know,
Speaker 1: you've got to get away from what you've been through
Speaker 1: and and do something you loved even though you were compromised. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was very I think it was therapeutic, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly incredibly positive. It was a difficult experience,
Speaker 1: not only because I was compromised, which is simply said logistically,
Speaker 1: it's a very difficult thing to do. We've we've refined
Speaker 1: it now so we're better at it. I'm about to
Speaker 1: go start again to do three more episodes, and we
Speaker 1: have a a really wonderful group of people put together,
Speaker 1: and you know, so we're it's gonna be a little
Speaker 1: more efficient, I think, um, But yes, it was. It
Speaker 1: was something that I've never done before, obviously, and and
Speaker 1: it was a story that I always wanted to tell
Speaker 1: and so I felt good about that, and I felt
Speaker 1: good that I was up out and about what else
Speaker 1: kind of got you through that period of because it
Speaker 1: does sound like hell. I imagine Felicity was unbelievable in
Speaker 1: in that instance too. Yeah, she got me through it.
Speaker 1: I mean she got me through it. She found the
Speaker 1: doctor I was. You know, I was really adamant that
Speaker 1: I was not going to do standard of care because
Speaker 1: I saw what happened to Kate, and I had met
Speaker 1: a lot of doctors that I didn't trust. I met
Speaker 1: a lot I did trust, but I didn't trust the system. However,
Speaker 1: when as you said before, when we look at the statistics,
Speaker 1: you look at that prognosis, you look at those numbers,
Speaker 1: you go like, you have to be kind of an
Speaker 1: idiot if you don't do that. And I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get better. Um, I'm still a believer in a
Speaker 1: certain alternative treatments and supplements and things like that. But
Speaker 1: I think if you you just have every cancer is different,
Speaker 1: as you know, and do you just have to look
Speaker 1: at what what do you have? What are the what
Speaker 1: what's the standard of care? What are the statistics? And
Speaker 1: are you going to do that or are you going
Speaker 1: to augment it with something else? Are you're just gonna
Speaker 1: do something else? And I think that people forget that
Speaker 1: it's their body. They should be able to do what
Speaker 1: they want, but they get afraid and they suddenly are
Speaker 1: just doing something that might kill them before the cancer kills.
Speaker 1: It's a very imperfect situation when it comes to cancer therapies.
Speaker 1: You know, so often they're diagnosed sole late. You know,
Speaker 1: you're lucky and that there was a treatment option that
Speaker 1: was quite successful and and that it hadn't metastasized, because
Speaker 1: I think the horrible thing about cancer is it's so
Speaker 1: often diagnosed when it's when you're symptomatic, and you're usually
Speaker 1: symptomatic when it's you know, a very serious situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that you know, that's a really it's such a tragedy.
Speaker 1: I think people are becoming much more aware of it now.
Speaker 1: People are getting tested, you know, for you know, your
Speaker 1: prostate is getting checked, your vowels are getting checked, your
Speaker 1: everything is getting checked much much more frequently now, and
Speaker 1: cancer screenings are happening much more frequently now. The thing
Speaker 1: is they simply have to be made available and accessible
Speaker 1: and affordable to agree, and they're not in this country.
Speaker 1: It's much better in America. In America, we know that
Speaker 1: doesn't if you don't have insurance, that's it. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: really working hard with Stand Up to Cancer and some
Speaker 1: of my other efforts because, um, not only do this
Speaker 1: methods have to be available, they have to be uh
Speaker 1: you know, not couse prohibitive to your point. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, there still aren't enough screening tests for things
Speaker 1: like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer. There are many cancers that
Speaker 1: are such silent killers, um, that we need to really
Speaker 1: figure out how we identify them at an early stage
Speaker 1: and then treat them as soon as possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic Stanley, a lot of people had to
Speaker 1: forego or out of choice, didn't want to get screened,
Speaker 1: and that is going to translate, sadly into many more
Speaker 1: cancer mortality. So, um, you know, I'm always preaching, you know.
Speaker 1: And and a friend of mine was saying, when it
Speaker 1: comes to fixing the healthcare system, just make sure that
Speaker 1: people are able to see a doctor once a year.
Speaker 1: Imagine how many things could be eliminated if that is
Speaker 1: just part of everyone's you know, standard of care. Yes,
Speaker 1: I agree. The problem is that we don't. We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't have that. The more you know UM, the
Speaker 1: better informed you are, the more proactive you can be,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the healthier you'll be. It would save gazillions
Speaker 1: of dollars were people simply to have a physical every
Speaker 1: year that was completely free for them. And then you
Speaker 1: go from there and the proper tests, right, the proper screening,
Speaker 1: the proper tests, the proper screening. I think that also
Speaker 1: there's very some interesting stuff has been coming out of
Speaker 1: all this COVID UH horror UH and the way that
Speaker 1: they were able to fast track the vaccines and everything UM.
Speaker 1: And I think with with AI, they're they're going to
Speaker 1: be able to screen for things and find things now
Speaker 1: much more quickly, much more effici much more affordably than
Speaker 1: ever before UM, and create new tests to find things
Speaker 1: where you won't have to get a scan. They'll be
Speaker 1: able to find it your blood, They'll be able to
Speaker 1: find it in whatever. I'm gonna move on from the cancer.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I also I want to keep
Speaker 1: talking about it. The one thing I wondered and worried
Speaker 1: about is your children having lost their mom a decade earlier.
Speaker 1: You know, in the course, I live in fear of this, Stanley,
Speaker 1: because I have to daughters and they were six and
Speaker 1: two when their dad died. Uh, and that had to
Speaker 1: go through your mind, not to mention the fact that
Speaker 1: you were about to become a father for the fifth time.
Speaker 1: As Rod Stewart once told me, Stanley, when I asked him, Rod,
Speaker 1: what are you doing having all these babies at your age,
Speaker 1: he goes, They're still letting the old pencil locate. Oh god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well, Jesus, there's an image now that
Speaker 1: I have in my head forever. Thanks a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, No, in all seriousness, because I just took
Speaker 1: this in a very different direction family. But I mean
Speaker 1: as a dad and as a widower honestly, And uh,
Speaker 1: this must have been been very tough for your kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was hard for them. The older kids were very um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew it was really hard for them. But they
Speaker 1: I could feel them just pull back, um to protect themselves,
Speaker 1: and that made perfect sense, and they'd be very sweet
Speaker 1: and very nice. But I knew that they were like,
Speaker 1: I don't don't want it. I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: All I want to do is hope. And I completely
Speaker 1: understood that, um, and I because I was really not
Speaker 1: accessible to them. They were just watching this like practically
Speaker 1: sort of skeletal creature walk around complaining, UM and telling
Speaker 1: them to believe that they had eaten anything. Yeah don't,
Speaker 1: what did you do? You smell horrible? Um. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really hard with Mateo. I knew Matteo, who
Speaker 1: was three at the time. UM, it was hard for
Speaker 1: him too because he saw me not engage, like completely disengaged,
Speaker 1: and he didn't really fully understand it. And as I
Speaker 1: was healing, I remember one time going to try to
Speaker 1: read to him in bed and I couldn't even read
Speaker 1: a story to him. I mean this was, you know,
Speaker 1: a few months after treatment, and I couldn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: have the energy to read destroy My voice wasn't strong
Speaker 1: enough to read an entire children's book. UM. And it
Speaker 1: was hard. And about a year later or so, I
Speaker 1: remember him crying one night and telling me that he
Speaker 1: was afraid that I was going to die. That he
Speaker 1: really knew. I mean, because they know. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we're animals. We know when somebody's sick. We feel it,
Speaker 1: we smell it, you know, we sense it. And he knew,
Speaker 1: and now now it's fine. Now it's fine. Now he
Speaker 1: just hurls abusive me. It's fine. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we dig into a very important subject, Stanley's friendship with
Speaker 1: Ryan Reynolds, plus excerpts and how to from Stanley's book
Speaker 1: Stay Tuned. I'm very jealous that you're such good friends
Speaker 1: with Ryan Reynolds. I'm jealous too. I'm jealous about it,
Speaker 1: yet another reason I want to be Stanley too. She but,
Speaker 1: how did you guys get to know each other? Because
Speaker 1: Emily and Felicity are sisters, I should mention, but and
Speaker 1: then he acted with with Emily? Or how did you
Speaker 1: guys get No, we were I was in Westchester. We
Speaker 1: were if thee had moved in. Felicity had moved in
Speaker 1: to live with me and the kids for two years,
Speaker 1: and you know, we weren't quite sure. I thought I
Speaker 1: was really gonna end up living there with Felicity. And
Speaker 1: after two years she was like, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna move back to England. And but
Speaker 1: while we were there, Emily emailed Fee and she said,
Speaker 1: you know Blake Lively. You know I spent some time
Speaker 1: with Blake Lively and she's really fun, really wonderful. And Ryan,
Speaker 1: and why you know, they're literally two miles from your house.
Speaker 1: Why don't you here's her email. We started emailing. We
Speaker 1: got together within thirty minutes. We were I felt like
Speaker 1: I had known them forever. Within a week, my kids,
Speaker 1: who were, you know, like eleven and thirteen at the time,
Speaker 1: we're sleeping over at their house. Um, well, I realized.
Speaker 1: Ryan reminded me that we had been in a movie
Speaker 1: together so many years ago, when he was like nineteen
Speaker 1: or something. I don't have no recollection of it. And um, anyway,
Speaker 1: we just became the closest friends. And then soon after that,
Speaker 1: very soon after that, we moved, but we've remained great,
Speaker 1: great friends. You took him to the doctor and tell
Speaker 1: us set that scene for us, Okay, Well, I didn't
Speaker 1: want him to come. I was staying. I flew back
Speaker 1: to New York. It was for my six months, uh scam.
Speaker 1: So I flew back to New York, and I was
Speaker 1: staying with them in the apartment, and I think Blake
Speaker 1: was away. Blake was away working and Ryan was there,
Speaker 1: so it's just me and Ryan, and he goes, do
Speaker 1: you want me to come with you? And I said no,
Speaker 1: and Felicity I kept saying to me Stanley because she
Speaker 1: couldn't come. She said, Stanley, I want someone to be
Speaker 1: with you. And I was like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone with me. I'll be fine, it's fine, no matter
Speaker 1: what the news is, it'll be fine. She said no.
Speaker 1: And then she Ryan said I really want to come
Speaker 1: with you, and I said, no, you're not coming with me.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine, don't worry about it. Of course, Felicity
Speaker 1: had spoken to him unbeknownst to me. I had written
Speaker 1: this in the book, but I cut it out where
Speaker 1: she said you need to go with him, and he
Speaker 1: was like, I know, I do. I'm gonna go. So
Speaker 1: then he convinced me that he never told me that. Uh,
Speaker 1: he said, Okay, I'm gonna He was so sweet. He
Speaker 1: was like, I'm getting you a car. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: up there, and I'm you just call me when you're
Speaker 1: when you're about to go in, and then I'll come up.
Speaker 1: And so I I called him, and he came up
Speaker 1: and of course walked into the room where I was
Speaker 1: getting the news, and the entire staff was beside themselves,
Speaker 1: and both male and female, and I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was quite it was quite something, and he was
Speaker 1: so sweet when they gave me the news that you know,
Speaker 1: you've got the all clear, there's no evidence of disease,
Speaker 1: and he started crying. I didn't cry. I was I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to feel except happy. But he started crying,
Speaker 1: which made the nurses faul even more in love with him.
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And the woman who was one
Speaker 1: of the oncologists she had to she I said, can
Speaker 1: I take out the feeding who? And they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's wait for the doctor. I said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to wait for the doctor. I don't want to wait
Speaker 1: for the feeding to guy. Can we just get it out?
Speaker 1: And they go, yeah, I just actually pull it out.
Speaker 1: So she so she said, oh, I'll do it, and
Speaker 1: she started doing it, and because I knew how it worked,
Speaker 1: she just started pulling and I was like, wait, you can't, don't.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? She goes, no, I'm taking it out.
Speaker 1: I go, you have to deflate the balloon in order
Speaker 1: to get it out of me. She goes, oh my god, yes,
Speaker 1: you're am sorry. I forgot but I think she was
Speaker 1: so flummixed by what's his name? You know that you know.
Speaker 1: Oh God, anyway, it was all fun. I do want
Speaker 1: to just get back to some of the wonderful things
Speaker 1: since we had such an intense, serious conversation about this Dai. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. But about sort of the love of food
Speaker 1: that that you have in this book, and you m
Speaker 1: you talk about a lot of recipes. I love your
Speaker 1: your drink recipes. I was going to make one and
Speaker 1: just sip it while we had our conversation, especially the grony,
Speaker 1: which I think your last line is take a sip
Speaker 1: and feel the sunshine in your inside or something like that,
Speaker 1: or become a new person with your martini. Um. But
Speaker 1: but you do talk about the liveliness of an Italian Christmas,
Speaker 1: and I thought if you could read chapter seven, it's
Speaker 1: in a section called Christmas Day that starts upon hearing
Speaker 1: the sound of tires. But maybe why don't you just
Speaker 1: kind of set the Yeah, yeah, so on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1: In my house growing up, there was a dish called
Speaker 1: timpano that we used as the centerpiece of the film
Speaker 1: and Big Night of the of the Meal and Big Night.
Speaker 1: And Timpano is a very complicated dish, very old fashioned dish,
Speaker 1: is very heavy dish. It sounds like a nightmare. Can
Speaker 1: I just say it sounds like a nightmare to make?
Speaker 1: Why would anybody want to make this dish? Because it's
Speaker 1: really good for certain people. I love it. Most people
Speaker 1: don't like it, but I love it. So this dishes,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly heavy, it takes a long time to make,
Speaker 1: it's very delicate, it's very temperamental um, and it's very
Speaker 1: hard to eat anything else with it because it's so big.
Speaker 1: So the meal timing of the meal gets thrown off,
Speaker 1: and it's every cook's nightmare. Can you explain what it
Speaker 1: is before you read this? Yeah, it's a big It's
Speaker 1: basically like um. If you were to take like a
Speaker 1: pasta dough or a pasta like dough, and you lay it,
Speaker 1: you roll it out to it a sizeable circle, and
Speaker 1: you put it into like a lake lake cruise or
Speaker 1: something like that, you don't like a Dutch heaven or
Speaker 1: an enamel basin, and then you fill it with CT,
Speaker 1: You fill it with a meat based rugoo, You fill
Speaker 1: it with um, salami, provolone cheese, you fill it with
Speaker 1: little meatballs, you fill it with hard boiled eggs, egg yolk,
Speaker 1: and this rugou, as I said, and Pecardino romano cheese.
Speaker 1: So it's very salty, it's very h heavy, uh, And
Speaker 1: so you cook it, you cover it up with the
Speaker 1: with the dough, you cook it, then when you take
Speaker 1: it out, you flip it over, you take off the
Speaker 1: pot hopefully, and what you're presented with is basically something
Speaker 1: looks like a timpani drum, hence the name timpano. Um.
Speaker 1: You let it cool and then you slice it like
Speaker 1: a cake and you see all the sort of layers
Speaker 1: of everything that you've put in. It's very beautiful. As
Speaker 1: I said, it's it's like cilantro. Do you either love
Speaker 1: it or you hate it. So this was made every Sunday.
Speaker 1: It's a very particular taste. But my it was just
Speaker 1: a tradition. But you can't time a meal with it
Speaker 1: because it's very fickle. So anything else you cook afterwards,
Speaker 1: like the work, yeah, who cares. But also you can't
Speaker 1: eat it because you're too full from the thing from
Speaker 1: the timpano and and you can't time a ham or
Speaker 1: a goose or a whatever. So Kate would get wasn't
Speaker 1: very happy about that, and Felicity I thought, really might
Speaker 1: be okay with it. She felt exactly the same way,
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'll read this. So my parents would bring
Speaker 1: this all the time. My mother doesn't really even care
Speaker 1: for timpana. My father is the one who loves it.
Speaker 1: So this is what. So we think that we wake
Speaker 1: up on Christmas morning, You're gonna languish with the kids
Speaker 1: a little bit, hang around and play with toy no No.
Speaker 1: Upon hearing the sound of car tires on the gravel drive,
Speaker 1: and a moment later the shouts of Merry Christmas from
Speaker 1: my parents mouths, I would sheapestly look at Kate. She
Speaker 1: would sigh quietly, and then as she slowly turned and
Speaker 1: stared at me, I would see something die in her eyes.
Speaker 1: At this point, my anxiety level would skyrocket, and I'd
Speaker 1: flit off to the bar see if I couldn't find
Speaker 1: liquid calm in a bloody Mary or a Scotch sour.
Speaker 1: Laden with gifts and platters of food, including the Pisto
Speaker 1: Resistance shrouded in a large dishcloth. This is the tympana.
Speaker 1: My elegantly dressed parents would climb the stairs, smiling from
Speaker 1: ear to ear, as thrilled to see us, as if
Speaker 1: we'd all been separated for decades, when in fact We
Speaker 1: had only just seen them the night before. They were
Speaker 1: so happy and excited. How could I even think of
Speaker 1: being put out by their extremely early arrival. Well, perhaps
Speaker 1: not so much media as my poor wife. I will
Speaker 1: tell you how the Timpano you featured The Timpano and
Speaker 1: Big Night, which you wrote and directed. Did you direct
Speaker 1: Big Night? Yeah? I co wrote it with my cousin
Speaker 1: and co directed it with Campbell Scott. Was that a
Speaker 1: homage to Kate Stanley we're here in the book The
Speaker 1: Timpano No Big Night? Oh no, No, it was just
Speaker 1: you know, my cousin and I. It just seemed like
Speaker 1: the right choice because it is so difficult, and it's
Speaker 1: only you know, an accomplished chef would attempt such a thing.
Speaker 1: And that's why we put it in because the character
Speaker 1: of Primo, played by Tony Shalhoub, would always just make
Speaker 1: things more difficult than they had to be. Tim Oh
Speaker 1: is it Boston? No with a specially grass now? And
Speaker 1: it is a shape like like a drum, like a
Speaker 1: Timpani drum, and the Hindu side, please my God, all
Speaker 1: of the most important things in the world. Speaking of
Speaker 1: difficult Italians, you write in your book that they can
Speaker 1: be very dogmatic when it comes to food, and uh,
Speaker 1: certainly with the Timpano that's the case in point. But
Speaker 1: there seems to be a right way of doing things
Speaker 1: and then the other way of doing so we thought
Speaker 1: we'd have some fun, uh with with Stanley Tuccie how
Speaker 1: to little food and life lessons based on the dogmatic
Speaker 1: Italian ways. So here, ladies and gentlemen, I present to
Speaker 1: you Stanley Tucci's how to. Let's start easy and I
Speaker 1: love this idea. It's brilliant. Why didn't I ever think
Speaker 1: of how to butter corn? Mm hm? Oh? The best exploit, Katie.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you it's incredible. Throw some nice salted butter
Speaker 1: on a beautiful warm piece of bread. Doesn't even actually
Speaker 1: have to be warm, and not like a cheap piece
Speaker 1: of bread, like a really nice piece of Italian better
Speaker 1: French bread. Salt your corn and then butter your corn
Speaker 1: with that buttered bread. Then you basically have like two
Speaker 1: meals in your hand. That's genius, Stanley, It's genius. Why
Speaker 1: why hasn't that caught on? I don't know, but maybe
Speaker 1: it will now. Yeah, I'm going to try it the
Speaker 1: next time I have corn on the cob. You're also
Speaker 1: quite specific and picky about what pasta goes with what sauce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do tell when you go to Italy. They're very specific.
Speaker 1: So if you say, oh, I'd love to have the bully,
Speaker 1: can I have that with star pasta? I mean what
Speaker 1: they'll do? Can you can I have that with Postina?
Speaker 1: You know they'll just pick you up and throw you
Speaker 1: out of the restaurant. I mean, there are so many
Speaker 1: stories I've heard of of of restaurant tours of chefs
Speaker 1: going sorry, I can't give you that, and the person goes,
Speaker 1: but I'm the customer. You're like, they go not anymore,
Speaker 1: get out. So what goes with what? Stanley? Well, let's say,
Speaker 1: having learned the original recipe in Boulogne and bullion is
Speaker 1: probably just one of the greatest sauces in the world.
Speaker 1: But the original recipe for bulloing is is very quite
Speaker 1: different than what we know of, but it's normally served.
Speaker 1: Both versions would be normally served with fresh maybe or
Speaker 1: even a strong dried pasta like uh Rigatoni or something
Speaker 1: like that. That because it's a it's a substantial sauce,
Speaker 1: so you want something that's going to support it. Um
Speaker 1: I would not do it with something like you don't
Speaker 1: do it with spaghetti. It doesn't work. And in England
Speaker 1: they always have they have a thing called spag bowl
Speaker 1: which is spaghetti bolo, but spaghetti bolon is it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And if you try to order that in Bologna, no
Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen. You need to tell those those
Speaker 1: Brits that they're not doing it right. No, no, they're
Speaker 1: so not. And and finally, um that you also talk
Speaker 1: about how to prepare main lobster, which is something that
Speaker 1: that Kate's fan only put it would put together. Um,
Speaker 1: And I guess there's really only one perfect way to
Speaker 1: eat to prepare main lobster, isn't there? I think so?
Speaker 1: So you have to use the water from the the
Speaker 1: waters of Maine, the sea water and seaweed and do
Speaker 1: it over a fire in a big pot. Throw in
Speaker 1: those lobsters when the water is boiling, put the seaweed
Speaker 1: on top, put corn on top of that seaweed on
Speaker 1: top of the corn. Boil it for I have no
Speaker 1: idea how long, six minutes maybe, and take it out
Speaker 1: and eat it and it's incredible. For more how to
Speaker 1: recipes and stories from everyone's favorite Italian Stallion go buy
Speaker 1: Stanley tucciese book Taste My Life Through Food, which is
Speaker 1: out now and by the way, we're officially in the
Speaker 1: public Asian month of my book called Going There. There's
Speaker 1: still time to pre order, and if you'd like to
Speaker 1: join me on tour, you can go to ticketmaster dot
Speaker 1: com slash Going There to find out where I'll be
Speaker 1: traveling and to get your tickets. Next Question with Katie
Speaker 1: Kurik is a production of I Heart Media and Katie
Speaker 1: Currik Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Curic, and
Speaker 1: Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers
Speaker 1: Derek Clements, Adriana Fasio, and Emily Pinto. The show is
Speaker 1: edited and mixed by Derrick Clements. For more information about
Speaker 1: today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter,
Speaker 1: wake Up Call, go to Katie currect dot com. You
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