Tour stops in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto March 17 through 19
by Adam Zara
Panoram Italia: The name of your latest comedy tour is “Nobody Does This”. We can just picture you saying this to your wife or parents with your trademark sense of shame and embarrassment. How vital of a role does your family play when preparing a new comedy special or tour?
Sebastian Maniscalco: I kind of made my bones talking about my family throughout my career, especially my father. So that’s been kind of the cornerstone of my act. Sometimes I talk about how I grew up and how my father raised me and now my act has kind of switched to how I’m raising my kids. Family plays a huge, huge role in what I do up there on stage and I think it’s very relatable because people, especially in the Italian community, are very family oriented. They kind of grew up the same way, but you don’t have to be Italian to understand the material. The root of it comes from the Italian upbringing, especially places in the world who have large groups of Italians; I tend to do really well in Boston, New York, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto.
PI: Your Sicilian dad has always been an essential figure in your comedy. He’s a hair stylist. You once told a story on a late night TV show—and I believe it was Conen—where you caught him selling your book at his hair salon and he personally signed the books. Did he style your hair growing up? And if not, how did that conversation go, if you had it?
SM: He actually came to a book signing in Chicago and I was signing books, there was a long line. I noticed as I was signing the books, it was already signed and I’m like “what’s going on?” My father was signing the books as well, but he was signing them on the other end of the bookstore. My dad had his own line! He’s definitely a character in his own right. He did cut my hair growing up, until I was like 24 years old, when I left home, and he had cut it when he came out here two years ago and I noticed that his skills are slipping in his old age, so I said: “it’s the last time you’re cutting my hair, the back of my hair is a crooked line.” He’s 75 and he’s still working, he’s still at it. He’s falling apart at the seams: his shoulders are shot, but he’s going to die behind the chair, he just doesn’t retire. I told him: “Dad, it’s over bro. You’re 75. This is like a young person’s business. They’re not going to walk into a salon and choose the senior citizen to do their hair.” But God bless him, he loves it, he loves the women there. Everyone loves my father in the salon. I think he likes it as a social outlet.
PI: Touching on the feature comedy you filmed last year called “About my father,” could you ever have imagined—and I know this is a rhetorical question—working so closely with Robert De Niro and what has it done to your dad’s ego to have this legend play him in a movie role?
SM: Well of course, my dad’s upped his prices now because De Niro was playing him in a movie. I never would have thought this was even a possibility, I mean this is a guy—De Niro—that I watched growing up—Casino, Goodfellas, The Godfather—next thing you know, he’s calling up my father and asking my dad “would you say this?”, “how would you say that?” so my dad was like a consultant on the movie. De Niro wanted him on set because there was going to be a salon scene and De Niro was going to be doing a dye job and my dad was teaching De Niro how to do a dye job on the set. Of course, my dad’s asking me on the side how much he’s getting paid for this, “how much am I getting paid for being a consultant?” This is a movie with Robert De Niro, what do you mean pay? He was losing money at the salon to be here so he was worried about compensation. De Niro wanted him to stay for the whole shoot, my dad was like “what stay for the whole shoot?! I gotta get back, I’m gonna lose clients!” He loved it; he was on cloud nine. He didn’t believe this was even going to happen; I told my dad De Niro was going to do the movie and my dad was like “yeah, right, I’ll believe it when I see it.” We shot it in Alabama for six weeks and it was surreal seeing De Niro playing my dad in a movie. I saw the movie for the first time with a test audience last week to see what they liked, what they disliked. It was really cool to see 400 people laughing at the movie we made. I think it’s going to resonate with a lot of people; it’ll make you laugh and make you cry at the same time.
PI: How important is Italian culture in your daily life and is it important for you to pass it on to your children?
SM: Unfortunately, growing up, we kind of grew up more Americanized than Italian. We didn’t speak Italian around the house which is unfortunate; I get a lot of crap for it, particularly from my dad. My dad is like “it’s my fault, I should have taught you how to speak Italian.” And my mom was afraid that if they taught me how to speak Italian I wouldn’t learn English. But we grew up hanging out at my grandparents’ house who didn’t speak a word of English and we grew up with those old world values and morals that they brought from Sicily—my dad moved when he was 15 years old, he spent his childhood there. Now that I have a family, I definitely stress the importance of learning the language and embracing the culture. My 4.5 year old takes Italian class and my son—he’s 2.5 years old—we got him a little bear, Giovanni, that speaks Italian. He’s just basically repeating everything the bear says. That was the one thing missing, really grasping the language like I should have. When we go to Italy now, once I get immersed in the culture, it all comes back (I took Italian in high school for two years). My dad thinks he knows Italian but he really doesn’t. He speaks Sicilian but I don’t even think he knows how to speak Sicilian! We went to Italy in 2009 for the first time, both of us together, and we went back to his hometown in Cefalù. He was nervous to speak Sicilian because he was not confident, but once he started, he was off to the races. Long answer cut short: Italian is definitely an important thing in our family.
PI: Because you’re famous for making observations, is there anything about Italian culture or Italians in general that you dislike?
SM: I don’t know if this is specific to the Italian community, but I know it’s specific to our family. There’s just a lot of negativity. In a day and age where you turn on Instagram or TikTok and everyone’s doing these inspirational [things] like “be positive!” I grew up with negativity, like the world’s ending. It’s gotta be an Italian thing because lot of people I speak to that come from Italian families, the parents weren’t sitting there going “everything gonna be okay (in an Italian accent)!” It was quite the opposite, like the world’s ending. Even to this day, my dad’s like “save your money, you never know! Your tongue could fall out tomorrow!” Like what? It’s never like we’re going to build on what we made, it’s always like it’s going to end soon. Maybe the negativity is one of the things I noticed is a little tougher in the Italian community.
PI: You performed at the Just For Laughs Festival many times throughout your career. Can you talk about what the festival means to you?
SM: My experience getting into the festival was through The Ethnic Show, The Relationship Show. Each year I went, I noticed that I would gain a little more of a following; it was small steps for me. But the Montreal comedy festival definitely laid a foundation for me in Canada to excel and, ultimately, start selling out these arenas. Also, the Festival, for me, is great because it’s a time where you get to see a lot of comedians that you haven’t seen. You get to go out and have a beer, which is not typical because all of us are touring, so it brings a lot of comedians together that you don’t see during the year. It’s unfortunate that it hasn’t gone on in the last 2 years because of the pandemic but hopefully once it fires back up again, it’ll pick up where it left off.
