Nadia Caterina Munno, star and executive producer of The Pasta Queen which arrives on Prime Video Oct. 24 highlighted two main ingredients that make the show unlike anything that has come before it: five generations of her Italian family and their perspective of Italy versus an American one.
Munno, who descends from an Italian pasta dynasty dating back to the 1800s and has gathered millions of TikTok and Instagram followers, will take audiences through four different regions of Italy to explore cooking. The thirteen episodes of the unscripted series will take viewrs through Campania, Puglia, Emilia Romagna and Lazio, where Rome is the capital. Lazio, Campania and Puglia were whre Munno was raised, and her father’s family comes from Campania. She wanted to include Emilia Romagna because of all of the well-known ingredients that come from that region.
“Prosciutto, balsamic vinegar, parmigiano reggiano, mortadella. I mean, the biggest, most famous ingredients come from that region,” Munno told Deadline after she spoke on the “Heating Up the Kitchen & Our Screens” panel at the production company’s annual Shine Away conference. “It’s where lasagna was invented. Tortellini was invented there. So I wanted to pick the region culinary-wise.”
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Munno has been working with Hello Sunshine since the beginning of 2021. The show evolved from a sizzle reel and then a pitch before landing at Prime Video. The show was shot last year for almost two months (seven weeks) in Italy and for four more in Munno’s famous Pasta Queen kitchen in Florida.
“There’s a lot. It’s very deep and personal. All of my family’s in it. My grandparents are in it. My great aunties are in it. Cousins, uncles, father, brothers, sisters, kids, my pets are in it, but it’s really a deep, emotional show that is raw. It’s got laughter, crying,” she said. “It’s got exploring unseen parts of Italy. I mean, God, we actually hiked a live volcano. We did a lot of fish out of water moments for me that I’ve never even experienced myself. There’s recipes that are iconic in it. You can really see the full depth of Italy in a very authentic, never-seen-before way. A lot of the programs in the US are from a very U.S,-based viewpoint of Italy, but that’s an Italian family telling you about Italy, aborn and raised Italian family with, five different generations of Italians in it, and friends. I don’t think there’s anything to compare it to.”
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Munno also works with rice-based pasta for those that eat gluten free. As for recipes that she had to include in the series, the list includes many classic Italian dishes.
“Eggplant parmigiana, tortellini, lasagna, bolognese, fetuccine alfredo. These are really classics, carbonara, cacio e pepe, you have to cover them, because these are the most viral on social media that I’ve ever had,” she said. “We’re talking about like 30-40 million views viral carbonara. People have a real struggle, and I get a lot of questions on how to make it extremely authentic, and there’s absolutely no cream in carbonara. Made a lot of Pasta Queen Service Announcements about it. So, I teach you how to do it like a true Roman, like the Roman gods intended.”
Munno promised to link ingredients she uses in the show to her Amazon store, and the recipes in the show will be put into a new cookbook coming out Nov. 12, three weeks after the show lands on Prime Video. Munno shared that she would be open to writing a memoir.
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“Yeah, hundred percent. I like taking life with humor. I feel that every life lesson can be turned into a little humor to teach someone else. I’d like to do a humoristic memoir, like a satire or something fun like that Everybody has failures. We all fail, but it’s like, how do you view the failure? You kick it to the curb, and you take life and then the glimpse of goodness, and you just keep going.”