Stanley Tucci was 45 when the first Devil Wears Prada came out in 2006. He’s 65 now, back as Nigel in the sequel that hit theaters on May 1.
At the original 2006 premiere he was there with his first wife, Kate. He also met Felicity Blunt that night. She was Emily Blunt’s older sister, a literary agent at Curtis Brown who had joined the agency the year before. Kate Tucci died of breast cancer in April 2009 at 47, leaving Stanley with three children, twins age 9 and a 7-year-old daughter. He and Felicity reconnected years later and married in 2012. Emily was a bridesmaid. She is now his sister-in-law.
In 2017 Tucci was diagnosed with stage 3 squamous cell cancer at the base of his tongue. Treatment was aggressive radiation and high-dose chemotherapy. He was fed through a tube for about six months. He lost his sense of taste entirely. For a man who built a parallel career as a cookbook author and food show host, everything tasted “like wet cardboard,” in his own words. He kept the diagnosis private for four years before going public in 2021. He is now in remission.
The visual continuity people are reacting to is real and also explainable. The shaved head, the glasses, the tailored suits, the trim frame. He has worn the same uniform since the mid-2000s. In a recent Town & Country interview tied to the sequel’s release, he described entering “the winter of my years” and trying to “look as good as you can while it’s happening.” He has not claimed any cosmetic procedures.
His taste came back. He has said it is now sharper than it was before the cancer. “I can actually taste and smell things better than I could before.”
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