Stanley Tucci is booked and busy, but that wasn’t always the case — even after striking fame. The beloved actor opened up about two instances where he couldn’t find work in a new interview with Vanity Fair. He shared that one dry spell occurred after starring in The Devil Wear’s Prada (2006), despite the film’s massive success.
“After The Devil Wears Prada, I couldn’t get a job, and I didn’t quite understand that, but that’s just the way it was,” he shared. “So I went and did stuff that I didn’t necessarily want to do, but I did it.”
Tucci, promoting his upcoming film Conclave, starred as Runway magazine art director Nigel Kipling in the classic flick, opposite Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep. While Streep gave a career-defining performance, and that’s saying something, in her Oscar-nominated role as intimidating boss Miranda Priestly (AKA Anna Wintour), Tucci gave unexpected pathos to what could have been an otherwise one-dimensional character.
The Devil Wears Prada (Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved)
Tucci shared that his career “has always gone through these fluctuations,” bringing up a second work stoppage, which was because of his health issues after being diagnosed with oral cancer in 2017.
“Having been sick six years ago, that threw a wrench into the works for a while, and then you slowly get back,” he told VF. “I needed to work because I needed money. I probably started working too soon. I didn’t really have the energy to do it after the treatments, but you had to do it, and eventually, you climb back up again.”
Tucci’s throat cancer treatment involved chemotherapy and radiation, without surgery. “I lost 35 pounds,” he told Willie Geist that year on the podcast Sunday Sitdown. “I couldn’t eat. I had a feeding tube for six months and everything tasted like you-know-what and smelled like you-know-what.”
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Since his cancer recovery, Tucci has had no problem landing on his feet. He went on to star in the Disney smash Beauty and the Beast, Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), and in the Ryan Murphy miniseries Feud: Bette and Joan (2017). He also hosts the food travel show Searching For Italy, and (while not an official gig) went viral for a video where he whipped up an at-home Negroni cocktail while flashing EGOT-worthy arm muscles.
Elsewhere in the Vanity Fair interview, Tucci teased whether he would reprise his role in the upcoming sequel of The Devil Wears Prada, which is reportedly in the works.
“I can’t answer that. No one will let me answer that,” he said. “I think they want it to happen, I would imagine. But I cannot really speak to it because it might not happen. I don’t know.”
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