For as long as Halle Bailey could remember, Italy lived in her imagination as a single image: a woman running through a vineyard. She traces it to no particular film or moment, but to something more diffuse. “It was just a beautiful feeling,” she says. “The big sky, rows of vines going forever.” So when producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Girls Trip) called her about starring in a romantic comedy set in Tuscany, Bailey barely needed asking. “The minute he said it was set in Italy, I was like, ‘Where do I sign?’ ” she recalls.
That’s how the singer and actress — best known for playing Ariel in the live-action The Little Mermaid — found herself dashing past sun-warmed Sangiovese grapes for You, Me & Tuscany, Universal’s warm-blooded new romantic comedy shot among the rolling hills and ancient stone towns of Italy’s storied countryside. The film opens April 10. “You hear that phrase ‘fantasy come to life,’ ” Bailey says. “But this was really it.”
In the film, Bailey plays Anna, a culinary-school dropout from New York who impulsively slips away to a Tuscan villa and falls into a tannin-rich entanglement with Michael, a polyglot vintner played by Regé-Jean Page, the charismatic Bridgerton alum. The story involves a family restaurant, old-fashioned romantic hijinks, and enough handmade pici pasta and ink-red Brunello to make you want to book a flight mid-picture. Director Kat Coiro — whose credits include Marry Me, Matlock and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law — set out to honor Italy down to the smallest detail.
“I kept saying, ‘Don’t let me get the Italian-ness wrong,’” says Coiro, who is Italian-American and is currently pursuing her Italian citizenship. She brought on production designer Elena Albanese (The Spiderwick Chronicles), an Italian herself, and asked the crew to interrogate every sandwich, every table setting, every glass of wine: Does this ring true to Italy? “I wanted Italians to feel like this is a film for them,” Coiro says.
You, Me & Tuscany joins a long and distinguished line of productions seduced by the Tuscan light. Under the Tuscan Sun turned the region’s golden hills into a template for reinvention. The English Patient shot at the Monastery Sant’Anna in rustic Camprena. Gladiator used the cypress-lined Val d’Orcia region of southern Tuscany as a backdrop. Italy offers international productions a national tax credit of up to 40 percent, while the Toscana Film Commission assists with permits, local coordination and location scouting. Packer confirms that cost control was central to the decision to shoot the entire film on Italian soil, including sequences nominally set in New York. “It worked brilliantly that the economics lined up with the authenticity,” he says.
On Bailey: Michael Kors dress; Gabriel and Co. earrings, ring; L’Atelier Nawbar ring; Saint Laurent shoes. On Page: Dunhill suit, shirt; Ferragamo belt; Omega watch; David Yurman necklace, ring; EF Collection earring; Di Bianco loafers. The pair, whose characters fell in love in Tuscany in the film, recently reunited for a photo shoot amid the vines in Napa Valley.
Photographed by Mark Griffin Champion
Filming spanned 34 days, split between Rome and the Val d’Orcia. In Rome, the company worked at Cinecittà, the legendary studio where Ben-Hur, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Gangs of New York were made. Most interiors were built on stages there, giving Coiro precise control over the lighting and design that signal Anna’s transition from New York’s cool restraint into Tuscany’s warmer palette. Then the production moved north, and Italy’s cultural rhythms shaped the shoot as much as its scenery. Italian crews don’t do overtime. They work shorter hours, then go live their lives, and those hours are non-negotiable. “They do not live to work,” Coiro says. “They work to enjoy.” That insistence on balance forced the production to operate with precision. Locations were kept close together, and every hour was used efficiently. The result was a lean shoot that, paradoxically, made space for exactly what the film celebrates: actually enjoying the country you’re in. “It felt like the whole thing was a vacation,” Coiro says.
The company based itself near Pienza, a UNESCO hilltop town known as the ideal city of the Renaissance and locally famous for its assertively fragrant pecorino. “It’s very stinky,” Page confirms cheerfully. “A sign of the quality of the cheese, I’d say.”
Coiro shot most outdoor material on a single family-owned vineyard in the area. The property contains multiple villas, a wine shop, a piazza and a 13th century castle tower, with a founding story stranger than fiction: The owners discovered it in the 1960s, hacking through overgrowth with a machete to reveal an 18th century villa untouched for centuries. The wines are named for celestial bodies. “The worry I have,” Coiro says, “is that people will think we shot it on a greenscreen because everything looks so perfect.”
Recalls Bailey of filming in the vineyard, “The first day I got to Tuscany, I opened the shutters, and the view just hit me. I had this moment of, ‘I can’t believe this is my life.’ ” She brought along her almost-2-year-old son, Halo, and says they were welcomed like family. “Everyone would pass the baby around and dote on him.” Bailey took multiple cooking classes for the role — “I learned to do the pan flip and all those fancy knife techniques” — and spent her downtime hunting for kitchen pieces to bring home. “I’m a shopping girl, so I bought these beautiful yellow lemon plates, and lots of olive oils and jellies.” She also discovered Narni, a natural thermal pool in the Umbrian hills roughly an hour from the Val d’Orcia base. She loved it so much, she went twice.
Page was new to Tuscany despite earlier Italian travels to Milan and Venice and spent his days off driving back roads in a rented 4×4, working through the hilltop towns scattered across the region. “My favorite hobby was just getting in the car and driving to a new little hamlet,” he says. “There’s usually maybe two restaurants. You’d pick one and just eat whatever Nonna’s cooking — half the time it’s a grandma back there in the kitchen. It’s the best way to discover food and people.” In the evenings, the hamlet where he was staying held lantern-lit courtyard concerts, with live music bouncing off old stone. “It felt so cinematic,” he says. “We were making a movie and somehow I was also living one.”
On Bailey: Carolina Herrera dress; Anabela Chan earrings, ring; Esor Marie shoes. On Page: Giuliva Heritage suit, shirt; Omega watch; David Yurman necklace, ring; EF Collection earring.
Photographed by Mark Griffin Champion
The surrounding wine country deepened the spell. Nearby lie two of Italy’s most revered regions: Montepulciano and Montalcino, where some of the world’s most celebrated Brunello is made. Page was so taken that on the last day of production he sent cast and crew home with bottles from the estate vineyard. “It was something that came off the soil of the place we’d been working,” he says. “Which felt right.”
Italian cars, meanwhile, became Coiro’s obsession. The original script by Ryan Engle (Non-Stop) had one convertible. By the time Coiro was done, she had added an iconic three-wheeled Ape, a tiny Fiat, an electric Topolino and a Maserati — “the whole gamut of Italian vehicles,” she says. She also tucked a single Vespa into a marketplace shot, far enough back that it wouldn’t read as a cliché. “The Italians begged me not to since every American movie has a Vespa,” she says. “So there’s just one, deep in the background.”
And at least once, the prop department blurred the line between performance and pleasure. During a wine-tasting scene, Bailey and Page realized that what they were swigging wasn’t diluted grape juice. “I think that’s real,” Bailey said at the time. Page agreed, and Coiro felt compelled to investigate for herself. As for whether the bottles were ever quietly swapped out — “I can neither confirm nor deny,” says Packer, with a laugh.
The food was equally authentic. Coiro had hired food stylists in the conventional way, then stood on set one afternoon watching the plates arrive and felt something was off. She turned to the chef whose restaurant they were filming inside and asked directly: Is this Italian enough? He said no. She hired him on the spot. “He ended up being our chef and our consultant,” she says. He served handmade pasta at the monitor while she directed, and Coiro has footage of herself eating from porcelain with a proper fork between takes. “I show it when I come back to work in America,” she jokes. “These are my standards now.”
From left: Director Kat Coiro, Bailey and Page on the set of You, Me & Tuscany in Italy.
Universal Studios
Off set, Coiro visited the Adler, a thermal spa resort in the Val d’Orcia that she calls “one of the most amazing destinations I’ve ever visited in my entire life.” She says her Oura ring registered in “restored” mode throughout production, indicating a state of pure calm. Packer’s wife had her own version of that response at Six Senses Rome, where the production filmed key scenes. “She told me, ‘You go back to New Jersey. I’m good here,’ ” Packer laughs. “I am very glad she came home eventually.”
A reverence for Italian life extended naturally to the land itself. Sustainability was built into the production from the start, supported by NBCUniversal’s GreenerLight program. Coiro, who sits on the board of the environmental nonprofit Habits of Waste, ensured the film’s themes — fresh organic food, connection to the land, a culture of reuse — extended beyond the screen and onto the set itself. The art department incorporated reusable and returnable construction materials wherever possible, with sets stored, returned, or donated after filming.
Not that anyone wanted the shoot to end. Every Friday while filming in Tuscany, the production wrapped and a DJ would spin in the piazza. Hair and makeup, camera operators and two local guitar players — hired as extras who became recurring cast — launched a dance party in the town square. It inspired a last-minute script change: The original ending had Bailey’s character say “Let’s eat” and cut to black. Coiro rewrote it on the spot.
Now the film closes with a party. “The theme of this movie is joy,” says the director. “If people take anything from it, I want it to be: Italy makes you feel great.”
Bailey knows that holds even for armchair travelers. “Close your eyes,” she says. “The vineyard fantasy is right there.”
THR‘s GUIDE TO TUSCANY AND BEYOND
WHERE TO STAY
Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco (Val d’Orcia) A private Brunello estate spread across 4,200 acres of Val d’Orcia countryside, where the wine is estate-grown and seclusion is assured.
A view of Tuscany from Castiglion del Bosco, A Rosewood Hotel.
Rosewood Hotels and Resorts.
Castello di Casole, A Belmond Hotel (Siena countryside) A restored 10th century castle with sweeping Tuscan views and enough history in the walls to keep you up at night, happily.
A room at Castello di Casole, A Belmond Hotel, Tuscany.
Belmont Hotels
La Bandita Townhouse (Pienza) “This chic little hotel — with an elegant garden for dinner in the summer — is owned by former New York record industry exec John Voigtmann, who lives nearby and is an enthusiastic connoisseur of the region’s wine scene,” says Emily FitzRoy, founder of Italian travel advisory Bellini Travel.
Pienza, Siena Province, Tuscany, Italy. The Palazzo Comunale in Piazza Pio II. Pienza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Ken Welsh/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Borgo Santo Pietro (Chiusdino, near Siena) A medieval hamlet turned refined farm estate where Michelin-caliber dinners arrive alongside morning boxes of garden produce. Regé-Jean Page based himself there during production. “It was out in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “I could go running in the mornings and not meet a car for an hour.”
Casa Newton (near Pienza) A design-forward private villa near Pienza with countryside views that are worth flying for.
The pool at Casa Newton.
Casa Newton
WHERE TO EAT
Ristorante Campo del Drago (Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, Val d’Orcia) Two Michelin stars, estate Brunello and a setting that turns every meal into an occasion.
Osmosi (Montepulciano) Michelin-recognized contemporary tasting menus in a hill town where the food is as carefully considered as the sight lines.
Osteria di Porta al Cassero (Montalcino) The sort of unhurried, polished trattoria you come to Brunello country specifically to find.
Osteria del Leone (Bagno Vignoni) “This is one of our favourite lunch spots in all of Tuscany,” says Bellini Travel’s Emily FitzRoy. “Keep to the classics and don’t miss the porcini when in season, fried or with tagliatelle.”
Osteria Le Logge (Siena) “On a side street leading off the Campo, in an old pharmacy, you will find one of the best restaurants in Italy. Our friend Mirco is the owner, a wine obsessive who produces his own Brunello di Montalcino,” says FitzRoy, who advises to “always request a table in the atmospheric main dining room.”
L’Osteria di Maccarese (Rome) The on-set restaurant from You, Me & Tuscany, where the pici is just as good off-camera. Halle Bailey is still talking about the chef’s arrabbiata with crispy pancetta. “The best thing I’ve ever had,” she says.
Trattoria Cacio e Pepe ai Prati (Rome) Kat Coiro’s personal Roman favorite, a neighborhood institution in the Prati district, was a short walk from her apartment during production. “You could have dinner for like $20 and it was incredible.”
WHERE TO DRINK
Mastrojanni (Montalcino) Old-school Brunello royalty, where the wines are as storied as the hillsides they come from.
Castiglion del Bosco Winery (Montalcino) Estate Brunello tastings inside a working winery that doubles as one of the valley’s most beautiful properties.
Avignonesi (Montepulciano) A biodynamic Vino Nobile estate where farming with conviction makes for better wine.
Avignonesi Winery
Cartacarbone, courtesy of Avignonesi
Salcheto (Montepulciano) The most carbon-conscious cellar in Tuscany, where doing the right thing and drinking well are one and the same.
WHERE TO UNWIND
Adler Spa Resort Thermae (Val d’Orcia) Natural thermal waters and countryside stillness. Coiro’s off-set highlight of the entire shoot. “One of the most amazing destinations I’ve ever visited in my entire life,” she says.
Adler Spa Resort Thermae
Adler Spa Resort Thermae
Narni Thermal Springs (Umbria) Not Tuscany, but worth the detour: a natural thermal pool in the Umbrian hills said to have inspired C.S. Lewis in naming Narnia. Bailey went twice. “The water is this crystal-clear turquoise,” she says. “Cold, but so invigorating.”
Six Senses Rome Spa (Rome) A high-design urban sanctuary inside one of Rome’s most beautiful converted palazzos.
This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2026 Travel Issue. Click here to read more.
