How a role that “insulted” Stanley Tucci ended up as “one of the greatest” he ever played
One of the many occupational hazards for a character actor is playing roles that don’t necessarily take their breath away when they read the script. However, everyone has bills to pay, with Stanley Tucci putting his offence to the side and ending up with one of his most cherished roles.
While it’s true to say that Tucci is one of the most popular figures in Hollywood who can always be relied on to deliver a solid performance regardless of who he’s playing in what genre, it’s also true to say that he’s not a leading man. He can be, and he’s as reliable as ever, but he’s more of a supporting player.
That also comes with its own downsides, after he admitted that The Devil Wears Prada‘s Nigel Kipling, undoubtedly one of his most memorable turns, had a detrimental effect on his career when nobody wanted to hire him for anything in the immediate aftermath of the film’s rousing success.
The same can be said of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones to a certain extent, with Tucci’s only Academy Award-nominated performance coming when he played someone he despised with every fibre of his being, ruling him out of playing any more sick, sadistic, or altogether twisted antagonists ever again.
In another recurring foible of the long-tenured character man, Tucci has popped up in plenty of mindless blockbusters as a background player. The remarkably stupid sci-fi caper The Core, the dismal Jack the Giant Slayer, two separate parts in a pair of Michael Bay’s agonising Transformers sequels, and Netflix’s mind-numbing The Electric State among them, but one stands out as particularly memorable.
Despite what some people might think, it isn’t The Hunger Games‘ Caesar Flickerman, even if it’s clear he had a wonderful time hamming it up in the dystopian franchise. Instead, he pointed to another one of cinema’s most frequent scourges, according to many veterans, anyway: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“I loved Captain America: The First Avenger,” he told Variety. “It was one of the greatest roles and jobs I’ve ever had. I was there for three weeks and had a wonderful time, and I also loved playing that character. I was cast as a 70-year-old man at the age of 50, so that was disturbing.”
Tucci played the scientist and exposition machine Abraham Erskine, who develops the formula that turns Chris Evans’ scrawny CGI body into the titular buff superhero. While he admitted he was “flattered and insulted at the same time” by being cast as someone two decades older than he was in real life, the actor was wise enough to acknowledge how “you have to mix it up, as they say.”
Thespians can often be a touchy bunch, so it’s understandable that Tucci was a little shocked to be offered a character 20 years older than him. As insulted as he may have been, he nonetheless seized the opportunity, with his one-and-done contribution to the Marvel machine quickly placing the studio’s transgression in the rear-view mirror and rewarding him with one of his favourite gigs.
