Actor Stanley Tucci on his new cookery series, catching coronavirus, and how a negroni cocktail made him a social media star

The beloved character actor loves nothing more than eating and cooking Italian food and shaking up cocktails for his friends and family

His six-part travelogue series on CNN, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, sees him learning about the cuisine of his ancestral homeland

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Stanley Tucci (right) speaks with professor Elisabetta Moro in Naples about the history of pizza in CNN’s six-part travelogue series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. Photo: CNN

Published: 2:30am, 16 Mar 2021Updated: 3:46am, 16 Mar 2021

It’s 5 o’clock in London and Stanley Tucci is talking about how he almost threw his back out trying to lift a 40-kilo wheel of Parmesan cheese so he could cut it into two moons, hollow out one of them and make carbonara in it.

Looking distinguished in a black polo neck, the 60-year-old actor is video-chatting from the backyard studio of the London home where he and his family have been riding out most of the last year.

Like most people, he has grown used to these sorts of virtual conversations – except his extra screen time has earned him a spot in the club of unexpected quarantine social media stars, alongside Patti LuPone, Leslie Jordan, and husband-and-wife duo Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody.

In late April 2020, Tucci posted a three-minute video of himself shaking a negroni on his Instagram account. The internet drank it up.

Tucci arrives at the premiere for the film White Crow in London. In his new series he learns about the cuisine of Italy, his ancestral home. Photo: AP. File

His life has lately been consumed by Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, a six-part travelogue series on CNN in which the culinary enthusiast roams different regions of his ancestral homeland learning about local cuisines.