Stanley Tucci on Fatherhood, AI, and Semiretirement After Masterplan

Stanley Tucci stays busy—as an actor, author, TV travel host, and father to five children who turns 66 next month. But like the scheming thief he plays in the Prime Video art heist comedy Masterplan, Tucci doesn’t dream of downtime. “I don’t think I’ll ever really retire, but I am inching toward semiretirement,” he tells Vanity Fair over a recent Zoom call. “I’ve been doing it for 46 years and I’m a little tired. There are just other things I want to do. I want to paint more and sculpt. I want to direct another play. My younger kids are still young and I want to be with them.”

In Masterplan, streaming this Friday on Prime Video, Tucci stars as a career criminal who tracks down his long-lost children (Victor Belmondo and Simona Tabasco, from The White Lotus’s Italy-set season) to steal the Mona Lisa from The Louvre. The theft isn’t what drew him: “I’m never so interested in people stealing things,” says the actor, who’s positioned in front of a large Mona Lisa print for his press day.

But the script “reminded me of heist movies from a long time ago,” says Tucci. “All of those ’60s, ’70s stuff I found funny—they are slightly shameless and charming.” He mentions films like The Italian Job with Michael Caine, or The Hot Rock starring Robert Redford and George Segal. The antiheroes of those films are “not bad people,” he says. “It’s just the guy who’s really cool, a bit desperate, and doesn’t want to hurt anybody. They end up being protectors more than anything.”

Tucci’s Roger is also a cheeky sort of crook, one who prefers the term “alternative authenticity” over “fake.” Does he think it’s become more difficult to determine authenticity or forgeries in the age of AI? “It’s a nightmare,” Tucci tells VF. “I mean, I can’t tell half the time what’s real and what isn’t on Instagram. Someone has to go, ‘Stanley, that’s AI.’ It’s too good already. It’s just going to get better. I think it’s weird.”

Tucci isn’t entirely against AI. He makes exceptions for the technology’s potential in the fields of medical research and visual effects. “If you look at the Marvel movies…those still have a substantial amount of soul and actual physicality to them,” says Tucci, who costarred in Captain America: The First Avenger. “Guys like the Russo brothers use it appropriately. It’s when you’re creating entire films with characters that are AI-generated—if maybe the actor has passed away—or you’re using that image in place of the actual actor, that can be quite disturbing.”

Technology’s impact on the shrinking media landscape inspired The Devil Wears Prada 2, which reunited Tucci with costars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and his real-life sister-in-law Emily Blunt. (Tucci married Blunt’s sister Felicity in 2012.) The long-awaited sequel, featuring Tucci as longtime Runway editor Nigel, grossed nearly $700 million in theaters worldwide. Masterplan, though, will be exclusive to streaming—but Tucci seems comfortable shifting platforms when required. “Nowadays, do I want people to go to the movies? Yes. Do I like going to the movies? Yes. Have we created an environment for ourselves where we don’t go to the movies as much as we used to? Yes,” he says. “So who’s going to help you make the project the way you want to make it, with the appropriate budget, and get it out there so the largest number of people see it?”

Tucci’s currently filming Tucci in Great Britain, a sequel to his National Geographic series Tucci in Italy that brings him closer to home: It’s based in the country where he and Blunt live with their two young children.

Trading spaghetti alla Nerano for fish and chips might seem like a downgrade—but Tucci pushes back on that assumption. “Why has a culture that’s been around for 2,000 years had this horrible reputation for food?” he asks, growing noticeably animated now that we’re talking about eating. “Turns out, it’s a perfect storm of loss due to so many different factors—extreme poverty and extreme wealth, a very clear class system, and England being on the forefront of the industrial revolution that took everybody away from farming and into the cities…. Obviously I’m doing Great Britain because I live here. If the food were shit, I wouldn’t do it. But the food isn’t shit. The food is amazing…and things have really, really started to change in the last 20, 25 years.”

Filming food-focused shows around the world has helped shape Tucci’s feelings about the political landscape. “America is in a very, shall we say, interesting place right now,” he says. “Having traveled a lot, talked to so many different people—politicians, artists, farmers, restaurateurs—the divisiveness that is happening now is really disturbing. There’s the old expression, ‘Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.’ If we look at leaders in the world today, I think that makes things very clear.”

Some of those leaders seem right out of The Hunger Games, which featured Tucci as a vain, preening TV host. A younger version of the character appears in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel that hits theaters this November. This time, he’s played by Oscar winner Kieran Culkin. Though Tucci met Culkin a few years ago, he doesn’t seem to have strong feelings about the casting or the film: “I don’t know anything about it,” he says. “I’ll see it, sure.”