Stanley “The Last Metrosexual” Tucci

Published Oct 30, 2024, 8:00 AM

Tomato, Garlic, Basil, Simmer. This week we read beloved actor-turned-food journalist Stanley Tucci’s new book "What I Ate in One Year: (and related thoughts)." Join us at the market as we select the perfect ingredients to pair with this delicious diary—including his possibly open marriage to Emily Blunt's sister, dining with King Charles, bad Italian food in Italy, discovering tequila with Blake Lively, under-seared scallops, parenting toddlers at 60, shopping for a group vacation, loving hotels, and how to make the perfect meal with only onions. Mangia!

Who's that knocking at the door. It's all your friends. You've filthy horse, your husband's gone, and we've got books and a bottle of wine to kill. It's Hollywood, it's books, it's gossip. I'm sure it's memoir, it's martinis. Celebrity poof Club, Read it while it's hot. Celebrity poof Club, Tell your secrets. We won't talk celebrity books. No boys are a loud celebrity book say it loud and cloud Celebrity book Club.

Buzz me in. I brought the queer vow.

Heyst, where are you?

Literally? Where am I ware? What? Who? You come to yourself? I travel so.

Much travel and at our age, sometimes our heads can be elsewhere.

Luckily, my knees stn't work?

Oh do they? Because you are your fucking all the time.

This, Oh, how dare you? You're the cocksucker?

And how great reviews? Beautiful reviews?

And you know what if I did even suck dick, amazing reviews may be like wonderful, wonderful, wonder wonderful. Listen, No enough of the bathroom humor.

Seriously, let's get serious because we have an extremely elegant topic today.

I know it's actually I'm like, oh, we started off so rawling elegance and we're talking about butter today. Oh and we're talking about oh, I don't know, crisp white wine from the Piedmont region.

Yeah, or even can I say it's hilarious, so wrong to have I don't know the crispus have ever happened.

I don't know what about. I don't know what insanely crisp peanut grease at lunch at one pm with your older son.

Who made me a beautiful Welsh rampit because he's really coming into his own as a chef, were talking about.

We're talking about none other than the hottest man to all moms in the entire world.

That is so true, mom bait.

Literally, mom bait, we were talking about one of the yummiest Italian Americans in history.

One of the original metrosexuals.

Literally, No, he's like the last, the original and the last. And we're going to get into that, someone who is famous for acting but is now known for.

Food and his guns. Ladies, because he do be working out quite often, often with his yoga.

Instruct Okay, shake, shake, shake your groove thing, that's a negroni I'm talking about. We are talking about none other than.

Stanley touch and his brand new book What I Ate In One.

Year and related thoughts. H This whole book is so like yummy, and it's like jazz. It's like soft jazz, rainy London afternoon with a good glass of wine.

This book is full up jazz. And it was so perfect that I was reading on the plane from Nantucket to La Guardia, having just had a week of being like mm so like rich, but also like cozy and gloomy because it was like shoulder season late September Nantucket. I was there. Yeah, I'll spill the beans.

Saw your personal life on this personal trip, but it was personal yet for your wife's business, yes, which is so Stanley. So he's always being so like well off to the Dingly Literary Festival with Felicity. God, she has so many launches. Okay, So you were having like a gluey.

And as we do this, I'm gonna make us a very Stanley Tucci beverage by just what they had on the iHeart fridge, because sometimes you just have to go with.

It's available, just what's available.

Some kind of improvised spaghettes, which is a little stella with a splash.

Of apaol, which you a true spaghett is Miller high life an apaol.

Okay, but he do want one, You're going to try it.

We love to peer pressure on this pod, and I think Estella will work because you know, I think the whole point of like the spaghetti is this high low, like really watery beer, and Estella is you know, like the most plain airport lounge delta beer.

So it's like it's a pale European lagger.

And Stanley Tucci is having to do a collab in like skinny for it.

No one is more airport lounge than too cheap. What I've realized reading this book is that he really is so comfortable in like a pretty new hotel. Yeah, where they have like the backlit bar and the high top like blonde wood tables.

Blondewood tables but like deep orange hues.

Yes, or she was on like deep steel window like fenestration.

Oh wait, while you make these, I'm just gonna read this passage just to kind of put us in place with this book of him checking into a hotel. Here's your set, Okay, thank you, darling, Cheers beautiful after Annenna's arrived from JFK to Manhattan. We checked into the Whitby Hotel, which is part of the Firmdale Group. I love staying in their hotels because there's a consistency of eccentric, cozy design. They are spotlessly clean and beautifully appointed, and the staff is kind. I first stayed and won the Covenant Garden Hotel in London over twenty years ago with Kate while promoting Big Night. We had the loveliest time together at that trip, and it was the first time I'd ever seen an Honesty bar, which is a stable in all Firmdale hotels. Another property of theirs, the Charlotte Street Hotel, is where I stayed while filming Captain American, where Flissy and I first spent time together.

As they say, this is so crazy because when the Firmdale Hotel group first comes up, like earlier in the book, when you stayed at the Crosby Hotel, which is a Firmdale property and so and he just goes more on that later, and I'm like, more on the Firmdale Group later.

I was like, girl, what more on that later?

And lo and behold, there was much more to say about their incredible properties.

Because a lot of times when like a book will be so like and we'll get to that later in the Luanaway, they don't get to it. But he was so being like, no, I must finish my thoughts on the firmiler.

He's a hospitality pilled mama.

So I guess this book is also even though it's all about like cod and butter, it is also like a meditation on aging, his wife, dying, his new wife, his own mortality with his new wife, Emily Blunt's sister, Felicity Blunt.

Such a funny name, Felicity Blunt.

Hello, I'm fit and she is a literary agent.

It's just the most literary agent thing that could possibly be.

It's such a movie, like a British John spin off, being like, oh meet my agent, Felicity Blunt. She'll be taking you to dinner.

Okay, So let me ask you something before we even get into all the journal entries. And this really quite lovely book, lovely book. So his wife died of cancer, Kate, his wife of fifteen years, has two kids with her. She dies in two thousand and nine.

And you know the whole backstory also with their marriage, which was he did a play with Edie Falco. They had an affair, he left his wife Kate.

And just you know, Stanley, if you're listening, this is a literary criticism pot and we will be talking about the chart. There's just a little bit of Delbert, but of course we're mostly talking about food and literature.

Well, Felicity Blunt, Yeah, the way he left his wife for her and then his wife had cancer and he got back with his wife and left Edie Falco and Edi fa never married.

Oh yeah, he got out of cancer guilt.

I don't know I who's out of cancer guilt. I think he was like, let me get back with my wife. But some mother my children.

Yes, And sometimes an illness can throw your priorities into stark relief.

Well, I don't know the exact timeline. It could have been like he needed some relief. And you know, of course you've done many plays. When you do play and you're with the cast, emotions.

Playing chemistry, and that can supersede reality.

Right, we almost get into these romances. Forty five minutes at the iHeart Offices.

Oh my god. Also just the redness of the iHeart Studio, the roomb if you will, and I.

Saw this quote from felt being like, oh, I'm thrilled he's back with his wife. I'm sure anyway, I read his wife did pass sadly, passes.

Very sadly in two thousand and nine. In two thousand and ten, he attends the wedding of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt and whoms does he meet at the wedding Felicity Bluntity And of course.

He had just done the devil rest pradact with Emily, which is they were becoming quite close.

And then one you later he's married to Felicity.

I think to one year later he they hook up at a firm deal group property and at the Charlotte Street Hotel. Sorry, okay, they make and then the next year they're married. I mean, when I read that timeline, I'm like, okay, wife, If illco back with wife, wife dies.

I mean, he's a talent, it's also passionate.

Also, it's classic man they need women, Yes, they need woman. Also, I think I don't think it's too soon. No, my first reaction was absolutely right.

I said, if I died and my boyfriend.

Married within two years, right.

Lived would be absolutely corpse.

You'd be rolling in your firm deal group grave. I think it's also I mean he had two kids and was like, I think that just is very classic male. They're like, okay, I'm a single father.

I need to like But also like Tucci is the most eligible man alive, and so just like when he became an Eli bachelor, it's like, so he's a gorgeous man who takes care of his body, wildly successful, elegant, can cook, loves travel, knows about wine, cares a little breast literature.

It's like, he's not gonna stay single. But I also don't see and to your point of all those things, I think he is someone that wants like more of a long term companion. I don't think after the wife he was probably like, Okay, I'm gonna like fuck around. He's like, I'm just gonna move on fast and get a younger wife and younger. She is younger, she is she's younger than Emily. Yeah, she's twenty one years his junior.

And there is a place, there's funny part where he's just like, and of course my child. And then comes the questions, why are you so much older than mommy? But why is mommy still taller than you?

The bar was so funny. He was like, this is what's happening during bedtime, which.

Makes them a huge fem tiny butch couple. Yes, but this makes sense because I heard from someone recently that I saw in real life. Oh yeah, he said they had seen Stanley Tucci recently in real life, and of course the Union Square Farmer's market.

Of course, and he was like just picking up what's fresh, and he's like, I'm so into aliums lately.

And they said he was short af I mean Italian guys are short, and he was wearing like when do you remember? He was wearing an open cartigan kind of maybe a khaki pant or a dress pant, a rown kind of like leathery sneakery kind of dress shoes like Dad Dad, but.

Like it's all Rothman's like he was probably like really nice leather.

It was definitely nice, like Milanese, like four hundred and fifty dollars, like sneaker dress shoes.

In this book, He's like, well, you know, I like clothes as much as I like food.

I certainly does. Yeah, I don't think everyone needs to wear a three piece suit every day, but my goodness, he was like.

My goodness a T shirt to a premiere and he's like, this is why I love wool and this is why I love Autumn.

This book is very transparent about the job of celebrity because it's just like he's like, I'm a sanm Pella greena ambassador, I'm a Tanker Ray.

And also it's like Tanker Ray number three, Like he really gets specific.

He's like, well take Gray number ten. There's no number three.

I'll leave.

You can see yourself out.

This is like when I heard it, Gay was like, I'm surprised how much Lily doesn't know. On the podcast, this is when he's referring to go on.

For the Palace event, I had chosen to wear a cream colored linen, double breasted and muted plaid suit, a white shirt of brown tie, brown socks, and brown shoes. I love clothing as much as I love food, and I always like to dress not only well but appropriately for whatever the occasion might be. I loathe the fact that our world has become so casual, so many people were the same thing for a night on in the town or to the theater that they were around the house, which is most often a T shirt and jeans, or even just sweatpants. When I did some cocktail videos during lockdown for my Instagram, one person commented very excitedly that I was wearing pants and a belt, although to be fair, that was all people talked about in lockdowns and pants with pants and hard pants, hard pants and soft pants. Let's face it, adults today dressed like children. Shots fired. I'm not suggesting that one down a three piece suit every day, but anything other than short sneakers and T shirts plastered with oversized logos or catchphrases like I used to drink but that was hours ago, or shit I don't have time for, followed by a list of that quote shit would be a step in the right direction.

Him quoting my sassy Walmartees, I was obsessed. Im go off. I mean say more, say it more for the people in the back, and you don't. And that's the thing. You don't have to be a coastally. It's just like we think, now, oh, everyone else's casual, so then you don't dress up, and then it's just casual. Casual casual. I mean, go to the theater and people aren't.

You go to the theater and people are in sweet sure vests, disgusting, horrendous. You and I are going to a film premiere after this, and we're and stun beautiful slacks kids, ripe slacks and dress shoes and button down shirts and silver brais.

Silver bracelets, and we didn't plan these outfits to be max exactly. The thing. What I was so inspired by reading this book is I kept on like reading, and then I would get up and go to my fridge and just make kind of random ship because I feel like that's what like random shit, because I was like, this theme is about how he's always like, oh, like my kids are so picking. He's trying to like push more things on them, but they're also kind of like still more advanced than like most I would say, like American children, Like one of them, who's four, is always asking for like butter noodles.

But the other one is like then graduates to wanting apasta, wanting to an apasta, which I would have never had as like an eight year old or whatever.

Now and they're having like pesto at four, which I feel like.

I arrived home in time to see the kids before school. They did pot moments afterwards into the Caravra nanny who's barely mentioned.

Yeah, then nanny. But then you're like, obviously they have so much nann eating because like Ham and Felicity are always going out.

But we'll get to the parenting in a second. Who, along with Felicity more than picked up the slack while I was away. I scrambled some eggs, pried up some Cotto cook slice Italian Ham, slapped it all between two pieces of lightly toasted white bread from the nineteen fifties our bakery around the corner, wolfed it down, then collapse into bed for longer than I'm disapated. Obviously, the sleeping pill decided that it had not completely fulfilled its mission. In the evening, after the children in pasta combest though, I seen muscles and white wineishchilads and garlic, dressed them with olive oil and parsley, and serve them with toasted French bread. I also made spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce for me because I was hungry than I had realized. Felicity declined my offer to join me for a bit of it.

Can I just say this to all of you kto heads out there, and you're like, we need to eat like eight hundred pounds of like bacon and steak and like chicken and TikTok girls making duns bean salads is like you can have pasta.

Fasta around the clock. Yeah, So well, everything he eats is so delicious, don't need to have like the most restaurants he goes.

To, right, which he's always like so annoyed. Yeah, which I love him talking about bad restaurants.

And he never names the restaurants, which is which.

Perhaps a bit too Yeah, and he doesn't even mention like Delta when they piss him off.

I know, And I'm a little like maybe like name your enemy a little more, like it's okay.

Like he has pasta probably like every other night, if not every.

Day, and he looks incredible because he also works out.

With hit Monique, his trainer. He's exercising like two hours a day and a lot of I think you know what he's having. And he says, which is so true, Like it's so much better than like Fanny Singer's like coming home pasta that's we've roasted to no end of having like three pots of pasta boiling and like wild garlic. He says, when he gets to a place, a new place, he makes a tomato sauce just to ground himself.

That was so coming home pasta though, but I'm saying.

It's a little more real than coming home pasta. Yes, is my point of her just being like, get seven pots, find the wild garlic. He's just being like, what do I actually have? Okay, I have this one onion, I have garlic.

I can make canto sauce.

Yeah.

So I made in my like gloomy too cheese week on Nantucket, we made pasta a la home when no sorry, pizza Ala home pizza. And I made a tomato sauce that I thought was so good, one of the best tomato sauces I've made, and obviously was so simple. But I just did one Vodalia.

Onion so sweet you can almost eat it like an apple. She's always saying that. He's just been like, hm, Millie, my fouryerl didn't want to bite into the Vodalia raw, but I put a little butter and salt on it.

Well there's one Lunch just makes onions, literally just makes onions. And I'm like, okay, onion.

I I love onions anyway, So you did just garlic basil tomato, no basil in the sauce.

Okay, the sauce was just the garlic, the onion, tomato paste, a whole thing of anchovies, the whole can of San Marzana tomatoes, and then a little ban of onion powder, a little then of garlic powder. I know that's kind of unorthodox, a little bit to put the powders in, but it's like you can do. Why pretend that I'm not just at home, you know, making a pantry pasta sauce, or.

You want to throw powder.

I used to be just a smidge no.

No, I used to be like very hashtag Italians mat of food, Like I didn't grow up with garlet powder or like onion powder, right, and I have brought it into my home and like I'll use it sparingly when I want it. And it's like, yeah, let's throw this on the chicken. Let's throw a little onion powder on a sauce. It's not going to kill it.

Sometimes sometimes. Yes. The point is my pizza sauce was really quite lovey. Did you make the dough? So the dough was no judgment purchased, but it was local dough. It was from something natural bakery. It was like a Nantucket Bakery.

No, literally, that's so Stanley Tucci. Yeah, like, oh, we stopped by and we provisioned like an amazing dough. We can whip this up. Sirsha Ronan is going over later.

Sirsha and her lovely brother and his wife and their kids, and they raise their kids the way that we do to behave themselves.

Okay, Yeah, he talks about parenting and they're going on this like holiday trip and he's like, I just have a few rules because I cannot go on holiday with people that don't parent like me. And my rules are like say you're pleasing, thank yous, and just like go to bed at a certain time.

There is something very I would say, unbothered about his parenting style, which I think is partially so this is his second round of kids. Yeah, he's also sixty and rich and has a nanny that goes unmentioned. But there is a little bit of this where it's like it's.

A very celebrity where it's just like, oh, he calls Felicity fee so like maybe they'll be in France or something like that and like we'll be like, oh we when with already on who is our host? And we chased tadpools with the kids, and then it's kind of drop the kids off, and then Fie and I went to like seven different like local oyster restaurant.

There's this joy of seeing the world through the kids are so which of course happens. We have kids and it's wonderful. But like when he's visiting their parents in Florida for the most where we did little to nothing except eat and take million Mateo that's the two younger kids that he has with Felicity to one of the small community pools that the part of this sprawling condo complex where my folks live. We splashed about with them, play the loudest games of Marco Polo the condo residents have probably ever heard, and helped Mateo as best we could to capture and hold chameleons for hours on end over our five days stay. My mother made various positives from her repertoire chicken cut lit, slap chops. But I feel like the way he's talking about parenting is a little bit like it's the first time he's seen the kids in a while. It's always a little bit like.

Well, because he's traveling so much and he's always like doing openings for his cookwear line out a Williams Sonoma and then is like doing a movie where he plays a priest, like New Orleans. And then he's like, I love seeing my kids.

I love seeing my kids. Oh my god, we caught Solomonders. It's so cute anyway byeto club.

Okay, are we going to talk about it? Let's finally talk about it. So on page sixty nine, he starts dropping little references.

This is the first instance I.

Have where you're like, do you guys have an open marriage? He says Felicity was out this evening. She said it was work related. I chose to believe her. And then just I'm gonna give you this is a whole other thing that we need to talk about. I made Chip a lot of sausages for the kids in the new Airfire, amazing contraption, and a side of rice and peas.

Now is that I'm surprised he likes the air f I was really surprised. He also mentions that she makes a broth at an instant pot. At one point, I was kind of like, that makes more sense, that's very boomer. But the airfire I was kind of shocked by because He also when he goes that wine bar that has the weird.

Oh my god, with the machine marking.

Me that quirks the bottle. I thought he would hate that. That was so gimmicky and weird.

Yeah, but there is something. This is why he likes the Firmdale Group. Yes, no, I feel like blonde. I feel like there's something metrosexual. Or you may disagree, like I feel like my Gadgett Gotchet's Sharper Brookstone and he's been like, wait, so get this. We went to this wonderful owned by the W Group. So basically it's there's a bar where you press a button, wine pours out and then it like corks it back up. And he's like, and it stays fresh for three weeks. Like, I feel like it is just dad to be so impressed by that, even though he's so like Tuscany, like these onions have gone bad, He's just like, oh my god, what an amazing contraption that is.

There's also the point in which I don't know if it's like Liam Neeson or like Colin fir this over for dinner, but he's like, we tried to hyper decant wine in a blender. Insane I really want to try that.

Yeah, it was Colin Firth, and he's like, Firth made me hyperd decant. Next time we get together, let's totally hyperd decant.

Okay. So the next kind of like instance that maybe like something's rotten in this Denmark being their marriage, he goes, they're cooking scallops that even Felicity saw taped some scallops, but they didn't really see it because the pan had not gotten hot enough, which was my fault because I had reduced the heat as the butter was about to burn and didn't communicate that. They didn't work out as well as she had hoped. She ate a few, but I had overindulged in cold soup not long before. I only had one.

That that was a horror movie to me. That paragraph like when you put a scallop down and.

My god, sitting there baking with baking from the inside.

Out, My god chills.

Yeah, so it's just gonna be this kind of sad, thick, rubbery sweat scallup that isn't getting that gorgeous here, no, Chris, because this scallop should be seared at the highest he possible for the shortest amount of time.

One minute. Then there's a moment where like he's like stripping outdoor furniture because like they put ugly varnish on it, which again was like so metrosexual, and he's like, didn't eat fee and I are like in an argument, and I feel awful about it.

Also, when she's sort of out of town for the weekend, then she comes back, he's making obviously small potatoes and carrots with garlic and onions, rosemary time and leaks and spring onions and larger potatoes and a potato leak soup and he's chicken breadth.

It is planning parmasana, but it's not. It's actually the way my family does it.

And so she's been in France allegedly I'm alone with Millia Matteo as Felicity is on a sort of retreating Bordeaux with two colleagues, something I almost believe was true.

That line was insane.

I mean creps that morning for them. That just she just leaves it there. So I'm just like wait because at first, like it happens, You're like, do you try to make a joke? Be like, oh, like is that what she's doing? And then then she comes back Okay, so this is when Repack yes. Upon her arrival, she was delighted to see the children, of course, smothered them with hugs and kisses. Cursorally pecked me on the cheek and started to eat. Soon afterwards, we all watched a Harry Potter film. She promptly fell asleep beside a wide awake Millie. Seems that someone had a busy weekend. I chose to remain in ignorant bliss.

That was insane. What cursory peck on the cheek.

Which is so something you do after you've been having an affair.

Well, also, I remember having this thought as a child, and like seeing parents always like peck bank on it, girl pack each other. And I was like, wait, what's what the peck? I was like, do parents even make out? Like I've never seen parents make out before? Like do you just peck when you're older and married?

I know it's this weird thing because like I'm not sure if it's because like old lips are weirder.

Or it's like in old they're always so hum right.

Well old movies they're always so close mouth kiss. Yeah. Times where boomers learned to kiss was from old movies. Yeah, so they don't know how.

To from Humphrey Bogart and they weren't watching such wild things and things I hate about Sessions.

But I also feel like they were going to like make out mountain in their like nulteen fifty one, Like.

They were victorious and they were being like sucking face. They were sucking face, and there was so much heavy padding and like putting their hands up like varsity jackets. O.

Yeah, she put her hand up his jacket. So I feel like if any one over sixties making out, it's Tanley Tucci.

Yeah. So then there's this final this where he names the puppy yes, and they buy they my mother, yea, thank you. Our marriage is doing just great. They buy this house in the British countryside. It's also just like classic celebrity thing where he's like, oh, it's so expensive and it's going to take like all my life savings to fix up this house in the English country stide.

It's just the poverty cosplays the brief poverty cost.

I have to work and I have to renovate, and I'm gonna die if I don't renovate. We spent the day at the house with the architects, and the engineer and the landscapers. I'm very excited about the prospect of creating a home where we can spend time together as a family, where friends and extended family can come from long weekends. Where I can build an art studio in an auxiliary kitchen in which to film the cooking show that has been percolating in my hungry mind for a while now. Where we can plant a vegetable garden and a small orchard and put the benefits of them to good use every season. Where my daughters or sons can get married, Where Felicity can bring her lover parenthesy s lovers, where my protologists can visit, where our grandchildren can spend time. He goes on, so, so.

Yeah, actually, Polly dire And at that point you're like, so that's the poll reveal. Yeah, And I'm like, if it was a joke, it would be like more of an obvious running joke. But it's only like reference basically, these three times of him being like, Huh, guess you had a fun weekend.

Guess you had a fun night. Oh, you had a book launch tonight. She certainly has a lot of launches. Meanwhile, he's at a San pellygreena launch every hour of the day, right, And he's like, doing, are they open? And is it? Just like I don't ask, don't tell, because like he's known for Landra one. Two he's older, so she's like, you're old, Like I need to have fun. Three he travels so much, so she's like, I need to have fun if I'm just.

Gonna be he's twenty two years her senior. It's like, I do feel like, you know, she's in a different generation in which open marriage is more common. It's weird that he would like I feel like because he's so like Instagram video every day of like Risotto, their whole he might be so like weird interview in parade being like we're.

Open, but no, I know, and I like then I started googling Stanley's and there's nothing about it. No. And there's one interview where he says he'd tried to break up with her because he was like I felt embarrassed because I was so much older than her, and like in this kind of like no, don't.

Leave, no, don't leave me.

Like we're going on holiday with Emily and John and the kids and Ryan Reynolds and Blake coming over and he's being like, oh my risotta plan is ruined. So I kind of think they're open. He thinks he's being really like funny and dad joke about their.

Open I mean, unless he's just being dad joke in general and they're not open, and he's just like, these are just jokes. But I'm just like the amount of them and the specificity of them, it's a lot, but it's not that much, you know what I mean. It's like there's she was.

Every page like, oh, yes, so Ryan Reynolds came over, Felicity.

Back, Yeah, you know, right. But it's like just these three very specific instances of him being like she allegedly went to Bordeaux with her girlfriends.

Choose to believe it cursory peck.

Yeah, the peck at the end, it's like that's the thing.

But then also throughout the book he's like, oh, I feel like which again is so celebrity. He's like, I feel so at home, Like when in the first part of the book he's like staying in a hotel he hates in Italy, and it's like filming.

With Isabella Roussolini. Ralph finds and they're in this movie called Conclave, which is coming. I just saw an ad for it.

It looks so good and it's like Priests.

It's Priests and it's just like a torrid thriller about the Catholic Church and all these cardinals.

Okay. I saw the poster and I was like last night.

When I was this looks like the best movie ever. So DIMENTI code and.

He talks about like how the camera. Yeah, but he's always like and I made Minnestrone to like eat in my trailer. And then he's like, oh, Ralph and I finally finally got to have dinner together.

And then they be good friends. And he's like, you know, it's hard to make good friends at this age. Oh, because he's like, well, we'd worked together and made in Manhattan, oh, twenty years ago.

That was amazing. That was like my first note because I was like, finally we're actually talking about made of Manhattan.

We worked together before I made Manhattan over twenty years ago, very briefly in The King's Man we'd only ever socialized a few times, so Filmy gave us the opportunity to spend time. When I one that era early two thousand, Stanley two, she played like gay coded straight men who were like communications assistants.

Den Laware's Prada.

In Made Manhattan, he plays Ralph Kine, who is a Republican senator. He plays his like head of.

Colm who's like annoyed at Jennifer Lopez's son and is so just like you better get out of here.

Right, and it's just like make sure that she's not a Democrat, because we can't have that in the news in the New York Post, thank you very much. And then in del War's Prada, he's just like Gerda Lloins and it's just like gay but not. And this is also why he's every mom's dream, because hello, he's.

Gay, but not just to gay enough for them to be like, ugh, I wish my husband would care about Marino Wool I mean, and like he's so like Codliver.

He's like one of those like illustrated birthday cards for women. Oh they're like.

Takes me out to dinner, wears fine suits. Right, it's just like buys me back.

You got me on. It's like a man with like a hot body like in a vacuum being just like sweetie, like I just cleaned the living room. And then just like I thought I'd get you something that didn't exist for your birthday like he is that.

I mean his like first breakout roll of Big Night, which I remember watching a young Italian American and you know, it's about the two Italian brothers who opened a restaurant in New York, and this line really stuck with me and some One of the most famous lines is he serves this American couple of posta meatballs and they asked for bread, and he phillips his ass on them, and he's being so like you are having pasta, you don't also inneed of bread. And then in that movie they make which I've only made once, timpanello, which is like pasta pie. It's crazy and it takes all day and it's a meat sauce but it's like ravioli, but it's layers and you're baking it and it's pastry.

I want to talk about food a little bit more. There's a really great passage where he is making a tomato and he goes, luckily it was a tomato that actually tasted like a tomato. Like so many vegetables these days, tomatoes often taste of nothing. When did that start happening? Things used to taste like what they were. Now something that looks like a tomato or a carrot tastes like just a thought of those things and fruit of vegetables organic they usually taste better, but not always. I remember pulling carrots on my grandfather's garden and the depth of flavor being profound. It was the same with everything you grew, from onions to plums. I think he's dead right, and I think there are so many gross tomatoes and we've actually become so accustomed to the tasteless tomato that we forget what a real tomatoes post.

Well, it's because of our American desire to have food all year round, but it's also I feel conservatives.

So it's your right that it's like, so we have least tomatoes in February there shitty, but it's like then you can go to the supermarket in July and still get those shitty tomatoes for sale. It's like they're doing February tomato.

That's why you do, like have to go to like the farmers market to get a tomato that tastes like a tomato. I mean, I feel like most of the time a farmer's market tomato is pretty good. And that's what was my Stanley Tucci moment today where I had this last of the summer tomato and I was reading this book and I was like, I need to use this tomato right now because Stanley Tucci would. So I cut up the rest of the half. I saw tata with garlic, ginger scallions, and then I took leftover Chinese food rice and made a tomato ginger fried rice, little sesame oil, a little soy sauce that sounds so and just threw an egg in there and just left it on the stove for Felicity to have later. My literary age that if so kind of you, what's gonna happen in the tomato? If not, it will go?

Yeah, it will absolutely go. I used tomato is about to go. This morning I made it delicious, delicious sandwich with boar's head.

Ham the stereo vibes.

One raw red on the thick slice of tomato and then defrosted Portuguese bread that was in a freezer.

Yeah, I mean this is another thing of I mean food and also British food versus us. So he buys beef and his parents are visiting and as they call it mince and his mom is freaking out, being like this beef is too lean.

He acts like he's out of petrol.

I'm like, bitch, no, calm down.

He's just like And of course in America, you guys call it a backyard, but we prefer the term garden. It's so much nicer. I'm like, wee bitch, real it the.

Fucking noll and like mar Worchester or whatever.

I love that when he encounters food he doesn't like, he just literally doesn't eat it. Yes, he's like. We were on a weird like boat cruise dinner for the Oppenheimer France premiere and they served some like god awful aspera. Guess I had one minus that I can't do it. I'm gonna go talk to Killian Murphy instead. But I think it's like something that maybe you and I could do a little bit more, because I do feel like when.

Food is I was like, I need to be throwing we don't like.

It, we're just eating it, and it's like, no, just don't eat food you don't like. Ever, just be politely declined. Thank you for saying that, because insulting, like, just don't eat it.

Yeah.

I also love the gastro pub disaster. Oh my god, he's so honest about when a mule shitty.

Haven't we all been there?

But it was a rather lovely, upscale, cozy place that have received several accolades over the years. So it's being so like getting like the best of the Cotswalds or whatever. It's like in this Redom.

Yeah, it felt a very Amtrak magazine where it's like the Sunday Roast is like, oh, you just go to whatever pub. But then are there are these like famous.

Elevated gastro pub that's like this chef is returning to his hometown and he.

Is using and they're being kind of the bear and they're like they're actually making an elevated.

Shirt trying to tie so bare. But like says, they were trying to do it like a spin on the classics, and it had spun out of control. We were all very excited, but then things took a bit of a turn. Our food was delayed for an inordinate amount of time because the customer had spilled beer with a computer system. In fact, we'd only learned about on our departure. The kids who came straight away, I guess their order having been put in pre spill. As we waited and waited and waited, we did find it strange that no staff never ever alerted that's that there would be a delay, or explain what had happened. We kept asking our service for the food, only to be told that they would check on it. But I guess they never really checked because they would disappear yet again from their fifteen minutes. After we've been waiting an hour and a half, the food finally came. I had hack with sampfire, which probably took all of seven minutes to cook. It was just okay. Other people had other things like meat, but I was too irritated to care. In the end, the owner's apologies were tipid at best, and he didn't do what any good restaurant ur would do, which is not charged for the wine or the dessert or something by way of compensating us for the long wait. In Italy they would overcome.

No, that is crazy that they didn't get a free round of drinks.

It's so that I'm just like just the drinks, the dessert, not the whole meal.

But hour forty five minutes obscene? What in here that he makes?

Do you want to make mm, that's a really good question.

Well you think on that. For me, it's the historic goose ragu He's in a town owned by the design of Brunella Cucinelli, and it's like this historic goose ragou that I guess it's like clergymen would always be eating goose, and like one day a year they let the peasants have goose. So the peasants as a full town put all these goose into these communal ovens and made like a goo bolonaise.

So do you want to do your own goosebulans or do you want to do it with your whole community.

I think I want to do my community. I think it's more like about like, yeah, community of everyone roasting goose because the bolonnai is to make it last longer.

Two things I want to do. One is he just makes a tomato sandwich at one point, but he's like, oh no, he missed a tomato pasta. It's like a taglia tel for like I don't know Colin for than Emily. Yeah, And he's like, I had these really good in season tomatoes, but he lets them sit in alive our own salt in the fridge for two hours first and then just throws them raw into the pasta when the pasta's done. I want to do that.

Yeah, it's too bad and honestly sad for you because we're almost out of tomato season, so have fun with your associated tomatoes like raw hard bland. I think, oh, this was a beautiful quote, which I think we should all buy by it. Like he is just being like passaba tomatoes and like a risotto and a fish and a salad, which is.

Also is not He makes risotto constantly, and he has his nice patch where he talks about like how difficult it is, like I've never cooked risota successfully. It's one of the hardest things to do. He's like, you need to have such a sixth sense for it. I'm still learning after all these years. Like, but I'm impressed that he's constantly throwing together I know I want.

To do it more. And he says this word that I learned in this book that I love, this Italian word mentakato, which is mean when you turn off the heat of the pasta and then you add the cheese and the button and then that's when you stir it with the.

Pasta water on it, and you let the heat of the pasta itself.

Cook it cook because the heat of the pan will add too much heat. Of course, I actually learned that from Mari Potalley. My idea of Fred One celebrity moment of his celebrity dinners that I found so funny is it?

And I just want to say, of course it's crass to talk about celebrities again.

Of course, and I'm not trying to name drop here at all. Is when Sam the famous play right an actor Sam hell is his name whatever, he at the last minute is like, oh can I bring friends over? And Stanley Tucci is like he always does this, and the friend is like Woody Harrelson and sircial Ronan, Oh do He'd already planned on having over. And then the friend is like, I'm gonna come over early. And this is the point where Stanley Tucci is really costplaying. It was like a stressed father and he's been like me and Fear are still in our workout gear, the kids aren't Bathe like, I haven't even stalked my bar with like child martini glasses. And then he's like, oh and the friend is like kind of come over early, and he gets like really mad and he's like go to a fucking bar and the friend is like, put it's raining, and he texts back just like it doesn't rain in bars. And then they come over and he was like, oh, I was so excited to cook for Sirsha because I hadn't cooked for her ever. And he was like and Woody was hilarious, and I was so glad to beat his new wife.

I mean that's where he is like so gay. But I guess also metrosexual is like my kitchen needs to be sparklean, clean. Yeah, it is this cosplay where's like pretending like they can't see the kid, like eating cheerios and it's just.

Like but I think his advice at the end of that was just like have it be clean, have barstock with wine, something for a groani, something from martiniz. You don't need to call back to our original Zoe episode of last week. You don't need whiskey, gin ruquila, say everything.

Just have the elements for martinis and you're trying to go take a great and pretend please.

And for those non drinking folks, Sam Pellegrino will go just fine at the Square to Flemn.

This book is really you know, and the related thoughts. It is like a lot about death and aging, which is quite beautiful, and he has a lot to think about because he's in his sixties and his wife is twenty years younger, so it's like really in his mind, and he has these kind of very poignant ways of talking about it, like when he talked about how he is like now thinking about death a lot more because he realized he has twenty years to go, and twenty years is amount of time that like he can really wrap his head around. Yeah, that really spoke to me because I was like, we are and at the age of thirty seven, say loud and proud, you know, I've maybe got forty fifty years left, and it's like I've never experienced forty or fifty years. I can't really maybe I.

Don't know what twenty that just twenty is, and.

Like I kind of know what like a thirty year chunk is too, Like I mean twenty years ago, like that was yesterday, literally thirty years ago still feels like like kind of getting it.

The scariest part to me that made me feel like really fear death, which he talked about now that he lives in England and like has his new family is He's like, I can't see these friends that I spent so much time with before, and he was like, if you think about that, I'm actually probably only going to see some of these people ten more times in my life.

Oh yeah, but that's more like when you're so serious and straight and like organizing really seriously.

That could we could be sixty, it's like not gonna be us, and like we both are on our third marriages with like four year olds, and I'm just like, oh, I would love to meet you, like in Dingley.

Next fall.

The same time, he's hanging out with like Colin Firth and like Lotty his manager like constantly knowing like you're hanging more than no, and.

They're going like he's going to the River Cafere with Tom Ford and then he's like and I won't tell you what we discussed, and I'm like, you guys are notingly discussing your open marriages and yeah, I'm like wool with this one passage where he meets the guy whose wife died. This fan who comes up to him, Oh yeah, and like says that his wife had recently passed, and he's like his hand shook a bit when he took mine, to which he held on tightly. I recognized the shaking was from age as well as nervousness, but I also knew that it was brought about by a flood of emotion as he held my hand. I knew that the very real and visceral feeling of her presence. So he's talking about how like the wife is there brought about by this moment, an experience they would have shared where she's so alive would weigh in over time, But he could not know this then did he need to? That realization and knowledge was years ahead of him. Yet her presence at times such as these would never disappear completely. It would always be there, always, but soon it would become less prevalent. In time, her presence would slip into his body, his heart and thoughts, sometimes gently, sometimes joltingly, but it would never last for as long as it would today. Eventually, years from now, it would a light on the tip of his soul for just a second or two, carrying with it a shiver of the past, a glimpse of a future that might have been, and then it would disappear once again. Isn't that so beautiful? And of course he's talking about his own dead wife, Kate Kate while talking about using this man as sort of And.

That's the other thing, whether or not to go back as we close this episode, about moving on or not. I think this book is a lot about like, Okay, you also can like get remarried and like still be grieving. Yes not, you know, just cut and dry. Obviously there are harsher situations like John Edwards.

Yeah, and his monster of a way you see rest in Hell.

But you can have a beautiful open marriage with a younger literary yes, and still grieve.

And still grieve here and there, and then have these little precious moments where your wife's presence enters your soul for just a moment.

Maybe you think about texting Eadie Falco just randomly watching an episode of The Sopranos.

They've put the kids to bed after their pasta, and then they're just like season three segments with extra virgin olive oil and bistecca ala Fiorentina. What does she wear?

What does she eat? How does what does she eat?

Pasta? Pasta hotel, the hotel, SA Sausage Joes shrim I mean he has a very savory palette, as is the custom today with the cool kids. Oh, very classic modern contemporary Mediterranean palette. It's like because he says he's not a big dessert person.

Well he also says like, I'm he's not being like I'm going to try to like cook like Tetobalki tonight, Like he's just like I stick to like what I know.

Yeah, He's like, maybe I'm actually being like too fearful and I need to get out of my comfort zone and try to cook Asian food more. But then I worry I wouldn't have the freedom to kind of adjust that I.

Feel with which that part was so smart, and we need to move fast. But it's like you have to really know a cuisine.

To know if it needs a little bit more garlic, oh, if it needs like you know, any It's kind of where it's like with Chinese food Malaysian food he'sn't known to.

Do also, which we didn't even mention throughout this entire book. This book is also about how he had like a tongue tumor and it was like couldn't taste which.

Yeah, but well he discusses that in his previous book Taste Right, and so he can be like, as I mentioned in my previous book, and I won't go into two.

Much because I'm in a book to He can't really do much meat. That's why it is a lot of fishing.

Because he doesn't like produce as much saliva, yeah, which is also why he isn't like love as Tannic reds, and so he prefers the Northern Italian red, which I still find has a lovely tan in to it. Because he's talking about how he's like instead of those like Central Italian like super big, multiple giano whatever that people like I love, who is like men usually want big reds, but you know, and he was like absolutely a Northern Italian.

He realizes that other new metrosexuals don't like a huge and their big yeah, don't like big cabs.

Yeah, and they like you know, the natty natty one.

And the only time he drinks tequila is at the beginning. Oh no, he doesn't even he makes a paloma, but he does it with jam.

That part was so weird when he was like, Felicity introduced me to this very interesting new drink called a paloma. I know. I was like, I'm like, what I think is the only Diagio like ambassador. You don't know about polomas and.

Then they tequila when Blake and Ryan come over, of course because like celebrity, even though Ryan owns a gin company.

Yeah, and like Stanley Tucci's a Gin ambassador. Yeah, but they're just being like, we're both celebrities. We have so we have to like to.

What does he wear? He wears like when it's casual, it's like a stunning Laura Piana.

Like Keanna he is keeping the lights on over there at the piano store, and it's.

Like what you said, like you know, at the farmer's market, a Stunningneker. Yeah, and like a beautiful again like Bruno Chanelli or like a Zenya pant Or. It's like a suit made by like a stunning tailor he met in search for Italy.

And then how does he live? Like Okay, here's the question. What are the countertops? Are they? I think are they marble? I think it's marble. And I think his house is kind of dark. Okay, yes, for sure, it's like dark remanded colors. I mean his house like I feel like, does look like a boutiqu Kota and like there is a lot of like dark colors in the dark greens and like the black window panes.

And he's always like making his cocktails like in a sidebar where there's so many espresso pods.

However, I guess I'm like, marble countertops are harder to clean, and.

I'm like, do you think he's doing something more simple because with the kids and like chopping.

Like it would be so sexy if you had like butcher block countertops.

But maybe he talks about being really jealous of David Beckham's outdoor kitchen, but he.

Also has this massive outdoor kitchen with this crazy grill and like pizza ovens.

I know, but he's like, it's not like backs. We always want something more yea, And I feel like it's like a navy blue velvet couch.

I definitely think there's plenty of jewel tones in there. I think you're right about the darker hues. Okay, here's my question. How present is the ex wife framed black and white photos frame like on the cape?

Well, because also it's like for the kids, well, I guess the older kids aren't really there. They're like trying to be makeup artists. Yeah, I think it's like one framed family photo with the ex wife not just.

Wife solo, no solo dead wife.

And then it's like some photos of them, and then I think it is like but.

They're like I think there's like a bowl they got on a trip to Japan together that's prominently displayed and it's known. It's like no one says it's Kate's ball, but we all know it's.

Kate's ball, and Felicity is of like, oh, I love Kate's bowl. You know, I love Kate's bowl. I think it's a low bed. I think it's glassy, medium low bed.

I think it's medium low.

He's sixty.

But then I'm like, actually, maybe it's not even medium low. It actually may be high in a hotel way.

And like just so many shit because also like British and British they don't do lost.

They are like high beds over there, and they're like clutter out the who and like she's not so cluttered, but like she's little cutter.

Might be a little cluttery, a lid agent agent. And there's books, pile, bridget shone stuff.

Yeah. I think there's like their reception area where calling Furth is having martinis is free of chargers, but it's Charaguers Central. Once you're get into the bedroom.

Well, and then there's like the whole part about like how much gadget and iguana. I think there's there's air fires.

Right, there is so many fucking gadgets. Yeah, obviously there's mains that are putting the gadgets away, but then the gadgets are coming out, and there's charging pads and charging stations and like there's an iPod doc that's.

So like Hotels iPad doc yeah, for recipes, and like I'm almost just at this point, I'm like, there's the Bows five disc. I mean there isn't, but it's so nose up in that house. And he's like, because.

There's at one point where he's playing music off his phone. He's like, I played the Great American Songbook off my phone and put it in a cup to amplify it. I really need to get a speaker because he's so gadget. He's like, I need an amazing and then like Nicol Christmas idea.

Yeah, it's like getting him a JBL and it's very parently. They're like getting him like the wrong speaker and no one can connect and it's yeah, so Christmas, I mean they're like, Okay, deconnect, Okay, try connecting again. Okay, who are you in the book?

It's Christmas around the clock over there.

I mean to me, I'm Stanley in your Felicity, and I'm just gonna be like, I guess I won't ask about like where.

You weren't born to I mean, you're married to a little agent though you're a Wifelicity.

Oh oh that she's more Felicity, but it is not involved in the who are you? No she is. No, It's like, well, that's why I feel like i'm standing because I'm like also married to a lit agent, right, and.

You think I'm going on a trip and my husband's just been like, I guess I won't ask.

Yeah, though, I guess you're also just like Harry's styles coming over for dinner.

And I'm so nice and we love him. He's such a good friend.

You're also just like Emily Blunt. You're getting together.

Yeah, I think I'm.

Emily, and you're like, I can't believe you didn't tell me. You're stopping my system. Ridiculous.

I love going over that, And then I'm being like, oh, I think it's time for us to leave.

Okay, and it's time just to end this episode. Dollars. I get this straight up, yeah, wild Garlic.

I love a diary. I think it's so much more revealing than a traditional memoir.

It is because if someone was writing a memoir, he wouldn't say felicity under coach scallops.

No, you get that in diary.

I'm giving this yeah for under non seared scallops.

And it's quite inspiring.

And and he's being honest. How he doesn't trust his own line of quickwear, and that's what you get in diary.

I don't trust it either. It's all, yeah, seven hundred dollars. It's look really expensive. I mean I guess it should be, but I'm just like the world need another like non coded ceramic. And he knows that, Yeah, he knows. Sorry, Bye, My Mommy, My Mommy is a broadcast was a produced the Vidarb Master, a supervising producer.

Hell Laura.

The podcast is done by the pizzolo here Christina Ever she makes a beautiful marinera simple little carrot on in Basil.

And the French shirt is that a sound engineer and also a producer.

The theme song is a Sicilian recording artist Steve as Her Phillips Horst is the old folks singer.

And there is just a one tiny illegal matter that my lawyer makes me say. That is La Monte Prolagos, a tiny office in Genoa. They do a nice job, beautiful and the artwork was known by Daddy Blanks and he studied the Institute the Fordma Michelangelo.

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