Stanley Tucci has revealed that his hit food and travel show, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, has been cancelled. The actor, 62, made the announcement during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Wednesday evening.
“Unfortunately, CNN has canceled all of their original programming,” Tucci told host Jimmy Fallon. “So hopefully we’ll end up on another streamer, network — we don’t know.”
He added: “But yes, I have plans to do season 3 and more.”
“Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy is one of the most successful projects produced by CNN Original Series, garnering two consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series. We want to thank Stanley Tucci for his dream partnership on this series.”
“We look forward to collaborating on the upcoming Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico, for which he serves as an executive producer. Searching for Mexico will air on CNN in 2023,” the network said.
Searching for Italy follows Tucci as he explores his Italian roots and uncovers the lesser-known delights of Italy’s culinary culture. The series’s first season premiered in February 2021 and was met with critical and audience acclaim, resulting in an Emmy award for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series.
Season two of the series kicked off over a year later on May 1, 2022. Tucci has expressed his surprise at the success of the show, stating that, “It became this thing that I don’t think any of us really anticipated.”
“I was really flattered that CNN came to me and said, ‘Hey, do you have any ideas?’ And this was an idea I had for a very long time. And then they said, ‘Yeah, okay, we’ll make that,’ ” he added. “It’s a great production company in London, and we started making it, and we made it. But did we expect it to become a big hit? Honestly, no.”