Sebastian Maniscalco on Filling Arenas and Telling ‘Offensive’ Jokes

Obsessed: The Podcast

The Daily Beast

Tv & Film

4.5 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sebastian Maniscalco is consistently one of the highest-grossing stand-up comedians in the country. With his Netflix special ‘Is It Me?’ and his autobiographical movie ‘About My Father’ co-starring Robert De Niro, he’s on the verge of finally becoming a household name. In this episode, Maniscalco opens up about doubling down on nostalgia and (mostly) avoiding controversy on stage. He also talks about how the comedy world has changed for better and worse since he got his start in the late ‘90s, shares stories from the sets of ‘Green Book’ and ‘The Irishman’ and explains how he decided to embrace the most embarrassing moment of his career on Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Tonight Show.’ This episode was originally published on December 6, 2022. Follow Sebastian Maniscalco on Instagram @sebastiancomedy Follow Matt Wilstein on Bluesky @mattwilstein Follow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod Watch full episodes of The Last Laugh podcast on the Daily Beast’s YouTube channel Highlights from this episode and others at TheDailyBeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilson from The Daily Beast, and for this holiday week,
0:10.7	we are revisiting a conversation I had a few years back with one of the biggest touring stand-up
0:15.9	comedians in the game, Sebastian Manascalco. Before Sebastian was quite famous enough to have an entire
0:23.2	SNL sketch that made fun of his very unique onstage affect, we had this really fun talk
0:29.0	right around the release of his last Netflix special, Is It Me? Now he is out with a brand new
0:34.5	hour on Hulu called It Ain't Right. I hope everyone is having a great
0:39.2	Thanksgiving break and we will be back with an all new episode next week. But for now, here's me
0:44.9	with Sebastian Manascalco. Where are you right now? Are you home? Are you on the road? What's,
0:50.1	what's going on? Where am I? I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
0:54.7	And I got it.
0:57.5	Is it hard to remember where you are day to day?
0:59.8	You must be go travel so much.
1:02.1	I had to look out the window to see where I was.
1:06.3	Yeah, I was in Naples, Florida for Thanksgiving. And then I came out here a couple nights ago.
1:12.6	I did Asheville last night and I'd do Charlotte.
1:15.3	Then I bounced to Rhode Island tomorrow and then to Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
1:21.7	And then done.
1:22.4	And then we're done.
1:22.9	And then we're done for a while.
1:25.0	And then you get to go home for a bit?
1:26.4	No, then I go to New York for Jimmy Fallon and some other shows that I'm doing to promote.
1:33.5	It just keeps going, yeah.
	...

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