Stanley Tucci Says It 'Would Be Great' to Revisit 'The Devil Wears Prada' (Exclusive)

Gird your loins, Devil Wears Prada fans! Stanley Tucci has shared his thoughts on potentially revisiting his character Nigel for the reported sequel to the 2006 film, which starred Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and his sister-in-law Emily Blunt.

“Listen, if that happens, it would be great,” Tucci told Parade in an exclusive interview in September. “I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. All I know is, it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Were it to be revisited, that would be great.”

As for whether Nigel would still be at Runway all these years later, the Emmy winner laughed, “I have no idea.”

Related: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt Reunite to Mark Major Anniversary of Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada alum chatted with Parade ahead of the launch of S.Pellegrino & Stanley Tucci’s Holiday Cheese “Cake”—a limited-edition four-tiered “cake” made of cheeses selected by the Golden Globe-winning actor. “You can have it before dinner, you can have it after dinner,” the Winchell star said. “It’s a really nice selection of different tasting cheeses.” Tucci fans and turophiles can order the festive, savory centerpiece for holiday gatherings from Murray’s Cheese starting Nov. 11.

Continue reading for more from Parade‘s exclusive interview with Stanley Tucci, including how his wife came up with the idea for his new book, What I Ate in One Year, out Oct. 15.

Aside from the cheesecake, what else will be on your table during the holidays?
Everything. No, literally everything. I live in England, but we do Thanksgiving anyway. Because I like Thanksgiving, and also the British love Thanksgiving because they don’t have it. So, we do a big Thanksgiving with the British family members and any American friends who happen to be in town, which is great. We do all the classic Thanksgiving stuff. And then at Christmas, we’ll usually do some kind of roast or something like that, which is very British.

During the holidays, are you the one in the kitchen whipping up the dishes and delegating?
No, no. My wife [Felicity Blunt] and I both. We do it together.

What is your designated task or role usually?
I’m usually better with the pasta, and she’s usually better with a roast. 

With the holidays coming up, your book is going to make for a great holiday gift.
I know!

Related: The Kitchen Staple Stanley Tucci Can’t Live Without

Tell us, what sparked the idea to write down 12 months’ worth of meals?
[Laughs.] Simon & Schuster and the editors here at Penguin, they wanted me to do another book. And I was like, “I really don’t know what to write about.” And I didn’t want to do a cookbook. We have plenty of cookbooks by people who cook a lot better than I do. So my wife said, “Why don’t you just write about what you eat in one year.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s actually a great idea.” [Laughs.] So I did that. And it ends up being a book about the passage of time, obviously, through the prism of food and how meals, whether they’re eaten out or they’re cooked at home, how they trigger memories, how they trigger thoughts about the future. Like I said, memories.

If you think about everything that you’ve eaten over your lifetime, how important that is, and how it has made you who you are and continues to make you who you are and define who you are. The quote at the beginning of the book that I use is, “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Is there one meal in particular that brings back happy memories or that you associate with happy memories?
So many meals! So many meals bring back happy memories. So many meals bring up painful memories. Not that when you were eating it, you were in pain, but it’s because the person you ate it with isn’t here anymore. Or meals that you ate with your kids when they were little and now they’re not little anymore, or meals that you’re eating with your kids now and they are little, and you know now as an older person that their childhood is the quickest thing on earth for a parent. And as a kid, you feel like it’s going to take forever. And as a parent, you think, “Please don’t get older.” But the next day, they walk in the door and they’re like a different person. So it’s about stuff like that.

I love that you said Felicity was behind the idea for the book. Did she get a dedication page?
Yeah, a little bit. [Smiles.]

Related: Stanley Tucci Shares the One Role He Would Never Want to Play Again

Did chronicling a year’s worth of meals result in you learning something new about yourself or your relationship with food?
Oh, yeah. Once you start keeping a diary, it can’t help but open up things about yourself to yourself. And it’s really exciting, weird, a little scary sometimes. It just kind of flowed. I have to say, it wasn’t incredibly hard to write. It just kind of flowed because if you just tell the truth of it, it’s just there. Obviously, I’m not writing down things that I don’t want anyone to know; that’d be weird.But just telling the truth of having a meal with your kids and how you feel about what you were thinking at that moment, that just comes easily.

Was this your first diary, or have you journaled before?
No. This is my first real diary. I mean, I’ve always taken notes over the years about things, maybe about a play I wanted to write, or a movie I wanted to write, and stuff like that. Sort of musings on the creative process is something that I have made notes about for many years, because I’m fascinated by that. But no, this was the first time. My first book was just a memoir of sorts, but not a diary.

What do you hope readers take away from this new book?
I hope that they…I don’t know. Honestly, I never know how to answer that question. All I can say is, I hope they enjoy it. I hope that they laugh at the funny parts and are moved by the moving parts—”moving parts” sounds like something in a car [Laughs.]—by the emotional passages.

Well, was there a particular message that you were trying to convey? 
No. No! It was just write what happened. And as you’re writing what happened, what happens to you when you’re writing that, and what comes out when you write about it. Today, I got up and I made pancakes, and then I looked across and I saw my daughter and I realized that her head was above the counter, and last week her head was not above the counter. It’s stuff like that. And then I asked her what kind of pancake she wanted, and then we had a discussion about this and that. It’s just that. At times, it’s about the mundane. But the mundane is where I think you find the most depth in our lives. It’s the other places, all the huge things and blah blah blah, this and that, big event. No. The mundane is where you find the meat of your life.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Next, Stanley Tucci Is Returning to Italy With a New Food Series