Sebastian Maniscalco is giving you the goods in his latest Netflix comedy special Is It Me?, cracking on musical theater, preschool hijinks and his wife’s indecision when ordering at restaurants. But there’s a different vibe this time around, a little glamour mixing with the goofiness. He’s wearing a tux, and his stage is bathed in gold.
And he did it on purpose. Maniscalco filmed the special at Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas last year during a recent residency performance.
“I was trying to bring back old Vegas,” he tells the Weekly. “I always felt like if it was the ’50s or ’60s today, that’s where the Rat Pack would be hanging out, at Wynn.”
It’s hard to argue with that sentiment, and Maniscalco has been playing Wynn and Las Vegas long enough to know what feels right. Encore Theater has been steadily adding other stand-up stars and up-and-comers to its lineup, but the 49-year-old entertainer from the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights has been captivating the room for longer than most.
“It really is a nice place, and I love the theater because it’s not huge. It’s intimate. It’s 1,400 seats, and you get a good cross section of the U.S. coming through.”
Is It Me? comes across a little harder, with Maniscalco poking fun at the evolution of political correctness and, occasionally, catching his audience off guard. It’s worth watching to see a comedian in his prime, still pushing through and challenging himself.
This year will be a pivotal one, and not because he has clearly mastered streaming specials after dropping this fourth Netflix show, or because he just launched the Daddy Vs. Doctor podcast where he brings a funny parental perspective to his actual pediatrician’s family medical advice.
The big thing in 2023 will be About My Father, the first film based on his material. He’s playing a version of himself, the son of an Italian immigrant father, and Robert De Niro is playing a version of his dad, Salvatore Maniscalco, a 76-year-old hairdresser who still works in the salon four days a week.
Once De Niro read the script and took the role, he asked to spend some time with Salvatore. “Being the actor he is, he wanted to hang out with my father and get his nuances, how he smokes his cigar, how he wears his hat,” Maniscalco says. “Then he wanted my dad on set to talk him through some things. There’s a scene that takes place in the salon, and De Niro’s doing a dye job, and he wants to do it right, so my father is teaching him.
“I’m sitting there looking at this, and I can’t believe it. I had posters on my wall of this guy growing up. And my father, he still goes to the salon all week, so he’s saying, ‘I gotta get the f*ck out of here, I’m losing clients.’”
Maniscalco knew De Niro from working with the legend in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, but the comedian is still fairly new to acting. He’s clearly a comedian who channels any anxious energy into his performance, but acting brings new obstacles.
“For me the challenge was to be in the moment and not overthink the performance,” he says. “The first couple days [filming] were a little shaky for me, but then you’re off and running. The difference is, I’m basically in every scene, no days off, working every day for six weeks.”
To those general artistic struggles, add that Maniscalco is telling his own story and representing his real family in this film, and it’s easy to understand why “it was anxiety ridden, I’m not going to lie,” he says. “It was fun, but there was a lot of pressure on me to deliver, and when you’re doing something you typically don’t do, there’s a little bit of doubt that you can pull it off. But after the first couple of days getting my feet wet, I felt a little more comfortable.”
SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO January 6-7, 7 & 10 p.m., $75-$195. Encore Theater, ticketmaster.com.
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