Joe Manganiello excited to honor Italian heritage in ‘Nonnas’ despite his height

With Nonnas, Joe Manganiello savored the opportunity to pay tribute to his Italian ancestry.

From married filmmaking duo Stephen Chbosky and Liz Maccie, the dramedy tells the true story of Jody “Joe” Scaravella (played by Vince Vaughn), an MTA employee stuck in a dead-end job who turns to generations-old Italian recipes for comfort following the death of his beloved mother, who, along with his grandmother, cultivated his love of food as a young boy. With the help of his wary but supportive best friend Bruno (Manganiello), Joe uses the money from his mother’s inheritance to open up a local Italian restaurant, Enoteca Maria, to honor her memory with a familial twist: he’ll only staff local Italian grandmothers — or “nonnas” — as the chefs. 

For Manganiello, best known for his turns on the vampire drama True Blood and the Magic Mike film franchise, the role allowed him the rare chance to lean into his Sicilian roots on screen. “I’m of mixed ancestry, so I haven’t been cast as Italian a lot in my life,” the actor tells Entertainment Weekly. “I’m a foot taller than most of the other Italians that I know because of the Croatian and the German. Those lengthened my brother and I out quite a bit. I’m 6 foot 5, my brother’s 6 foot 7. But there were nuanced, funny things about being Italian that I felt like I understood.”

That included the loving relationship between Bruno and his wife Stella, played by The Sopranos alum Drea de Matteo. “It’s the way that Italian couples can bicker, but it means that they love each other,” Manganiello says. “The script has so much heart.”

Manganiello recently acquired Italian citizenship in 2022, a three-year process that involved a lot of record-tracking via his grandmother’s side of the family, who hailed from Messina in Sicily. “I’ve always dreamed of moving to Italy, or at least having a house in Italy somewhere, and I knew that having an Italian passport could help along with that,” he says. “I’m more Sicilian, more Italian than I am anything else in my family tree, so having dual citizenship was something I always dreamed about.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Nonnas, aptly, also features what Mangianiello calls a “murderer’s row” of iconic Italian-American actresses. Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, and Susan Sarandon round out the cast of nonnas who cook up love on a plate. The cast bonded over many meals, of course — some at the real Enoteca Maria on Staten Island. “There were like 12 course meals, three, four times a week,” Manganiello recalls. “I love good Hollywood stories. Talking to Susan about Bull Durham, to Lorraine about Goodfellas, and Talia telling stories about The Godfather and Rocky, and Brenda telling Midnight Cowboy stories. It was the best.”

Nonnas is streaming on Netflix.