Yahoo Finance Stanley Tucci's Sense of Taste and Smell Are 'Heightened' After Cancer Treatment: 'I Got Lucky'
D Dipasupil/FilmMagic Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci lost his sense of taste and smell while undergoing treatment for tongue cancer. But now that he's cancer-free, he says it's stronger than ever.
The beloved actor — who's new show, La Fortuna, finds him playing an adventurer searching for deep sea treasures — stopped by the 3rd Hour of Today on Thursday, where he opened up about his relationship with food.
"I got very lucky," Tucci, 61, told Today hosts Al Roker, Sheinelle Jones, and Dylan Dreyer. "I can taste and eat almost everything now. In fact, my sense of taste and smell are almost heightened and more than they were before, oddly enough."
He went on to reveal that he has a greater appreciation for food now.
"When you're forced to go without something that you love — just like when you're forced to go without someone that you love — you appreciate them, and or it, much more when you're able to have it back or if you're lucky enough to have it back." he said.
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Stanley Tucci is trading in Prada for treasure in his new show “La Fortuna.” He joins us this morning. pic.twitter.com/Hc1U6df2m4
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 27, 2022
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In addition to his successful acting career, Tucci has become known as a celebrity foodie. He's published two cookbooks of his own and can often be seen making recipes in his kitchen on Instagram.
"Food means everything to me," Tucci said. "It's sort of all I can think about."
He also hosts CNN's acclaimed food and travel series, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, which will be back for a second season this year.
"CNN came to me and asked me to do this series a few years ago, and we've been able to make it happen," Tucci added. "It's been a lifelong dream of mine to explore the regional cooking of it in as much detail as possible."
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Slaven Vlasic/Getty
Back in October, Tucci revealed in his new book, Taste: My Life Through Food, that he was diagnosed with cancer about three years earlier, after doctors found a tumor at the base of his tongue.
He told The New York Times that the experience of undergoing high-dose radiation and chemotherapy to eliminate the tumor was "horrible."
Through the weeks of radiation, Tucci lost his appetite, developed vertigo and ulcers in his mouth and started having trouble tasting his food. Anything he consumed started to taste like cardboard "slathered with someone's excrement," Tucci said, and he worried he would never be able to taste again, even more than he feared dying.
"I mean, if you can't eat and enjoy food, how are you going to enjoy everything else?" he said.
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Now, Tucci said he's in remission. "Everything's great," he revealed on Today. "This particular kind of cancer, they actually have a blood test for it and I was just tested after I had a scan and got the more than all clear."
Today airs weekdays from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on NBC
