For Matt Ball, receiving his first Emmy nomination for his work on National Geographic‘s Tucci in Italy is “a real privilege” and “amazing.” As he tells Gold Derby, “It’s not just for me, of course. It’s for everybody who worked for that show … it’s a shared award.” This collaborative spirit is fitting for a docuseries that is all about sharing cultural experiences.
As for his on-screen partner, Stanley Tucci, Ball reveals that the Oscar-nominated actor for The Lovely Bones is a “very good musician” who can play both the piano and the drums, in addition to being a great chef. The cinematographer also praises Tucci’s politeness and professionalism, noting that he would never admit to tasting a disgusting dish. “He would always be very polite if he didn’t like it,” he confesses.
Ball’s original vision for the series was for food to be the “spine,” not the ultimate destination. “Food is what holds everything together, and the stories will come from that,” he explains. The goal was to avoid so-called “food porn” and instead use the dishes to illustrate deeper truths. “You want the food to lead to the story of the people and the culture, or how the farms have worked for hundreds of years, or how this has been passed down from family to family.”
The Emmy-nominated episode, set in Tuscany, is a perfect representation of Ball’s work. While the team filmed in Florence, they also explored more remote areas to find a connection between the old and the new. As Ball recounts, “They make lardo, the kind of cured back fat of pork, in these marble chests taken from the same mountains that Michelangelo carved his David from.”
As the cinematographer of Tucci in Italy, Ball faced the unique challenges of filming in busy, uncontrolled environments. To make the food look appealing, he relied on natural light, even putting the dishes near a window to make them “pop.” As for working in public spaces, “You deal with it when it happens,” he states. “It’s very hard to walk through the center of Florence and not get stopped, but you just move on and you get what you can in the time given.”
Ball feels “super fortunate” to have filmed in every region of Italy, and he doesn’t have a specific dream location to travel to in the next season. “Italy’s a fantastic country to go to. I’ve got to shoot all of it pretty much,” he concludes.
In addition to cinematography, Tucci in Italy is also nominated at the 2025 Emmys for Best Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special.
This article and video are sponsored content by National Geographic.