Tucci in Italy is swarming with handsome images: a mouthwatering dollop of spaghetti and clams inspired by a Neapolitan chef’s 94-year-old mother, majestic Renaissance-era palaces and quaint villages where the show’s host, Stanley Tucci, enlists locals to expound on Italian culture. But director of photography Matt Ball isn’t always looking for polish — he wants candor.

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“It’s not necessarily a show about how beautiful everything looks,” Ball says. “The primary goal is to get authenticity. And then we shoot around it and try to make it look as nice as we can.”

Ball’s cinematography led to one of the three Emmy nominations that Tucci in Italy received this year, alongside a sound mixing citation and outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special. He met Tucci as a camera operator on Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, which ran for two seasons on CNN. When National Geographic picked up the retitled version, Ball was brought on as DP. They’re currently in production on another spinoff, this time set in Great Britain.

Before shooting, Tucci, producer Lottie Birmingham and their research team map out a roughly seven- to 10-day stint in each city being featured that season. They find cooks, farmers, food producers and culinary experts to show off the region’s cuisine and landscapes. Ball, who collaborated with two camera operators and two assistants on Tucci in Italy, then designed shots as unobtrusive as possible so the contributors could feel comfortable.

“The work of making it look beautiful has been done for me already,” Ball says, downplaying his aptitude for capturing the vistas of Sicily, Tuscany or Sardinia so elegantly.

If Searching for Italy prioritized major destinations such as Rome and Milan, Tucci in Italy sought out less touristy locales, like Ball’s personal favorite stop, Le Marche. There, at the seaside restaurant Da Emilia, Tucci tried a spaghetti and mussels dish the chef’s eponymous grandmother had taught her to make years earlier. The Devil Wears Prada actor dined with the chef at a long outdoor table overlooking the Adriatic Sea — an example of the charisma that Ball encountered everywhere he went.

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“It looked fantastic,” he says. “The light was coming off the water, and it was a beautiful day. It was really lovely.”

Ball, for his part, gets to sample many of the dishes, too. Some of that intake depends on how much offal, for example, he’s willing to eat.

Ball’s food-oriented résumé is accidental, though. It started with a gig as a camera operator on the long-running Barefoot Contessa, where he met his wife. He’s since shot Be My Guest With Ina Garten as well as shows with celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Lorraine Pascale. He says he’ll stay on with Tucci as long as Tucci wants to continue his savory travels.

“Everywhere we go,” he says, “you’ll always hear somebody whisper, ‘That’s Stanley Tucci!’ ”

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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