In 2017, Stanley Tucci was diagnosed with throat cancer. They’d missed it at first, so it was serious by the time it was found and he needed chemotherapy to save his life. Having spent years watching his first wife, Kate Tucci, suffer through breast cancer treatments before she ultimately passed, Stanley promised himself he would not make his kids go through that a second time. His current wife, Felicity Blunt, had other thoughts, however. While speaking with Willie Geist on Sunday Sitdown, Stanley said Felicity, “had to drag me kicking and screaming,” into his treatments. Now, cancer free and living his best life, he is entirely grateful to her, “I wouldn’t be around if I hadn’t done that.”
Stanley Tucci is opening up about those who helped him get through his 2017 oral cancer diagnosis.
In a recent interview with Today’s Willie Geist on Sunday Sitdown, the 62-year-old actor recalled the moment he learned he had the disease, which was “terrifying” after the death of his first wife Kate Tucci in 2009 due to breast cancer.
“My late wife and I, we traveled all over the world trying to find a cure for her. So when I got it, I was completely shocked,” he explained. “I was terrified, absolutely terrified.”
Tucci said he was grateful the cancer didn’t spread to other parts of his body, but his treatment plan was still “brutal.”
“I lost 35 lbs.,” he said. “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. And it took months and months and months for me to finally be able to eat again and then taste properly again.”
Because of the difficult experience, the Citadel actor credited his wife Felicity Blunt along with sister-in-law and The Devil Wears Prada costar Emily Blunt for helping him through the ordeal.
“I was so afraid,” he said of his treatments. “I mean, they had to drag me kicking and screaming but I wouldn’t be around if I hadn’t done that.”
I watch the show A Million Little Pieces and they deal with the topic of cancer treatment a lot. It’s usually what Stanley said here, the character with the cancer does not want to pursue treatment anymore and the loved one begs them. I’m oversimplifying it for the sake of space, but the show has done a nice job of opening my mind on this subject. I appreciate where Stanley was coming from, especially having gone through it. But he did have young kids with Felicity. I’m sure they were also scared of losing him. He’d seen both POVs, it must have been such a difficult journey. And physically it sounds grueling.
I don’t want to get too maudlin, so I’ll just say thank goodness the chemo worked, and that this story has a happy ending. It is scary, not knowing if that gamble will pay off and risking quality of life in the meantime. I have not been through it, and I know many of you have. So I will leave it to those warriors here who have a story to tell. Power to you all.
Photo credit: Cover Images and Getty Images
I love him as an actor and I love them as a couple. If you haven’t seen his recent food travel series in Italy which was shown on PBS here, I highly recommend tracking it down. It must have been filmed after his recovery and knowing this puts in perspective how much he enjoyed all the food.
He talked about this in his book Taste. (It’s a great read, even better on audio, but the book has recipes as well). I can’t imagine going through that. I’m so glad treatment was successful for him.
I am glad that he was able to win as well. I imagine the emotional toll that Stanley had suffered with watching his wife fight it, triggered a deep hidden trauma that had been completely hidden and came to the surface at that moment. I have adored him for decades and I have always had a soft spot for him.
I can’t begin to imagine going through cancer after your spouse has died from it, and you’ve got kids. That’s a whole lot, right there.
If you have young kids especially, you have to fight for them so … yea, he had a responsibility to survive despite his experience with cancer. That being said, and not shading Stanley in any way, but for most Americans, there are other considerations too: What will surviving do to me and the others around me financially? I can entertain arguments about universal healthcare from either side but when it comes to ‘can I afford to survive?’, that’s such a sad consideration that I think the answer has to be: don’t worry about that. It’s covered.
The insurance industry is out of control. It’s infuriating. It’s nearly impossible to see the final cost of anything.
I had peritoneal cancer in 2020 which chemo did not cure, only an operation did, at the time. Now the cancer is back, in my stomach and metastasized into my liver. My oncologist has already told me the cancer is more aggressive this time, but I am doing the chemo for my loved ones. If I had my way, I would just say f*** it, enough already. It will keep coming back, it’s that form of cancer. And chemo sucks. But everybody has to decide for themselves and the people who love them.
Hey Carol, I also have metastatic cancer and it isn’t considered curable. Just wanted to say, big hugs to you and your loved ones.
Also, hugs to everyone else who is dealing with this.
I thought it was usual for oncologists to keep adjusting the chemo to try to maintain some quality of life for the patient during treatment, so I was a little surprised that Tucci’s docs kept on with it even when he couldn’t eat at all. Maybe that was what he wanted? Or maybe it was the location of the cancer that prevented him from eating, not just the chemo side effects? Glad he made it through.
@ Totorochan, I am so sorry that you are suffering from cancer and as I mentioned, the unthinkable can happen as it has many times before. I am sending you hugs and excellent juju to you and your family as you fight your battle. It’s a scenario of living through hell and I can’t imagine how hard it is to deal with. Know that there are people rooting for you and care about you as well. 🤗🤗🤗🤗
I’m sending hugs and good thoughts to both of you.
@ Carol Mengel, I am so sorry that you are having to fight a second cancer battle round. I have no words to offer as I have not had cancer, but I lost my dearest sister almost 2 years ago to pancreatic cancer.
I am sending you hugs and excellent juju as you and your family fight this a second time. Just remember the unexpected can happen. 🤗🤗🤗🤗
Thanks very much BothSidesNow for your kind reply to my post, and so sorry for the loss of your sister.
And thank you, MaryContrary.
Tototorochan, thanks for the well wishes. Good luck and hugs to you too. It’s a brutal fight.
Am I the only one who remembers that he cheated on his first wife with Edie Falco?
People on this site love him, but I always get a little bit of a skeevy feeling about him. Maybe this is why? I think I knew about this and then forgot, but the general “ick” feeling about him stayed with me.
I’d love to eat pasta with him and Felicity, I suspect, but he’s not quite the wife guy he’s projecting these days.
I’d forgotten about the affair, but something in me broke when I read that he chose not to be by his wife’s side at her passing. I have been trying to find compassion enough to overcome my feeling of fury for what to me seems like abandonment, especially since I don’t have all the details and he asserts he did it b/c it was too emotionally painful.
But I can’t find it.
Oh, I do remeber and don’t care for him because of it. That said, nobody deserves cancer .
Just wanted to say that all life is valuable and worth fighting for, whether or not you have kids. As a survivor I think a great message to focus on when supporting others in finding the strength to face treatments is that life is precious and worth fighting for, period!
My MIL was diagnosed with cancer recurrence in late 2019. It quickly metastasized and we lost her last year.
The doctor situation was impossible during the height of the pandemic. No one was allowed to go with her (and don’t get me started on FIL and SIL’s stupidity), so no one had any understanding or apparent desire to understand what was going on with her care. She didn’t want anyone to help advocate for her, and any time my partner tried to, he was completely shut down.
What I took from this experience is to be diligent about preventive care. If something feels off, please just get it checked out. Don’t settle for treatments that aren’t working!!! And have an advocate who can ask questions for you/with you. Even at wellness visits I feel like I have to compartmentalize my feelings and anxiety so I can make the doc speak in ways I can understand.
Hugs to everyone going through it. I hope you all get the care you need and want.
Yes, have an advocate! I was able to do that for my mother (multiple myeloma, then a return of breast cancer). She was the one with the cancer, so her wishes/decisions were paramount, but I was able to advocate on her behalf over small things & large. I knew her better than any of the medical personnel, so I was the one who could spot when something wasn’t quite right. It’s a crummy hand to be dealt, but my heart goes out to everyone currently struggling or who’ve had to deal with recent tragedies. Just please, everyone, when the person with cancer says no more, you have to respect that. Don’t force anyone into treatment.
Cancer is a beast, and chemo is expensive and debilitating. I was diagnosed end stage with mine at the start of covid – I was in the US and my health insurance was Mexican (I did have a travel rider of $250k, but that was spent in 2 weeks!), and, at one point, I faced the choice of spending ALL my savings or dying. Thank the heavens, the WTC Health Registry certified that my cancer (which NEVER happens to 52 year old white collar women) was caused by my presence at and continuing to live near ground zero in NYC. They picked up $2 million dollars of chemo and then 2 stem cell transplants. I am rounding into year 2 of remission and am doing EVERYTHING right to stay in remission as long as possible because mine will come back and I know what’s in store for me. I will not leave New Jersey because they have a ‘death with dignity’ law so that when the balance between staying alive and having any life worth living tips, I will make that choice. I watched both my parents die of cancer and I have zero desire for that protracted painful end. But I am unmarried and without children, so its just my siblings I will have to fight.
I’m truly sorry & wishing you the best! Stay well, hugs.
Oh my goodness, RMS. I’m glad you’re in the here & now and enjoying Celebitchy with the rest of us!
Minor correction, it was oral cancer and he had a tumour on his tongue. He’s lucky he didn’t lose it.