On this edition of SNAPSHOTS, DC get ready to laugh your butts off for this Saturday our guest is bringing the second leg of his “It Ain’t Right Tour” to the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available

He’s a stand-up comedian, actor, podcaster, family man and star of the MAX series Bookie. Let’s welcome Sebastian Maniscalco!

Welcome to SNAPSHOTS!

I’m in Pittsburgh. I got showed tonight, then we’re off to Philly, then Saturday night DC. Just coming off a five show run over at Madison Square Garden, which was unbelievable. I had my wife, my kids, I brought them on stage, I brought my parents on stage to kind of share in the moment of it all. And been having a great, great run. I think we’ve been on tour now for three months, and can’t wait to get to DC.

For those who are going to see you this Saturday night at Capital One Arena, tell us about It Ain’t Right Tour

Well, with this tour, just like previous tours, when I did in an arena, I perform in a round, because I really think that’s the only way you can kind of get used to see that you need as a comedian. Although it’s an 18,000-seat arena, I thought the round kind of provides not only the audience, but me as a performer, kind of an intimacy there that I was looking for. So, what I did is I dropped this stage. I used to have a higher stage, and it used to be a round stage. So now I made it a triangle, and I kind of lowered it to the floor with steps leading up to the stage to kind of get me closer to the audience. I do some crowd work, which I’ve always done in the past, but I think people nowadays kind of like to be incorporated into the show.

I got two great openers. They’re not even openers, they’re headliners in their own right, Pete Correale and Pat McGann with me. So you get a little different flavor of some other comedians up there. And you know, as far as the material is concerned, I’ve always kind of been an observational comedian, kind of looking at the world through the lenses of disgust and there’s going to be more of that. There’s a lot more family stuff that I talk about, and some pop culture stuff, which I haven’t really done in the past.

And this time around, I kind of saw it through the lens of some pop culture moments. So, it’s been great. I think the response of the tour has been fantastic and that people are coming out. I don’t talk about anything that is relating to politics, although we’re in an election year. I believe that stand-up comedy is an escape for people to get away from the kind of everyday grind of what they’re listening to on their iPad or iPhone or TV. I want to take people away from all that and just give them a good show.

So it’s great to have a wonderful comedian like you come to our town and make us laugh, make us think and make us forget about the craziness of DC for just the next for two hours or so. So I’m glad you were coming to town and bringing a tour to us.

I’m looking forward to it. And as I said, we’re just having a really, really good time. I also like, kind of walking around the city. On the day I get there to maybe address some of the things that I see in the city, to open up my act with some local humor.

Is there anything within the nation’s capital you’re looking forward to visiting or seeing why you’re here?  

Even when I was a kid and we I never got to go to the trip where you go inside the White House. So, one of the things I have to do before it’s all said and done is get a tour of the White House, go to some of those museums. I haven’t really done the museum run yet. So much to see in our nation’s capital that I don’t think I’m going to see this time around, just because it’s kind of in and out of there. But it’s a great city, and it’s very comedy savvy. I’ve been coming to DC ever since I started doing the DC Improv comedy club. And then I graduated over to the MGM National Harbor, and now doing Capital One Arena. So DC has been really good to me.

You said at one point “You can’t worry about other people’s success. Everyone has their own course, focus on being funny as you can be.” How did stay the course after all these years and what makes you laugh? 

So the second question, first, what makes me laugh? You know, as a comedian, I laugh at things that might not be set up as comedy. I find myself laughing at more serious stuff than anything else. I obviously like comedy and comedians, but, you know,  growing up, the way we dealt with a lot of pain in my families, was through laughter. So if we were at a funeral, we would find way to make or I would find a way to make people laugh at the funeral. I mean, it’s a serious thing, but I found that laughter always provided some type of medicine to when you were going through a tough time, or what have you. I definitely think, and you don’t even know what people are going through in the audience, I’ve heard time and time again, people come up to me going, it got me through COVID, or “I was going through an illness.” And every time I want to forget, I put the stand up on and it takes me away from depression through doctors and hospitals and what have you.

So you know that when I’m up there, I don’t really ever think of this stuff, but when somebody slaps you in the face with and you’re like, “wow, I kind of really take this person away from some pain.”

So in the first question, I just stayed the course. I was very diligent about getting up on stage every night to work out material. And it was sometimes three, four times a night. And wherever I could get up, I would go. I wouldn’t have an ego about any of it. If it was a laundromat that was having a comedy night, or if it was a restaurant with they would put up comedy in the middle of anything. I would go to a restaurant and go, where’s the stage, and then there was, like a crate in the corner of the room. So I would just stand on a crate and tell my jokes to a full restaurant that was eating that had no idea comedy was even going to be there, performed in a boxing ring once, where you know fresh blood on the on the canvas from the night before. Where I could get stage time, I would go.

You have been in the biz for over 26 years now, and recently broke a record at Madison Square Garden, what advice would you give to your younger self?

That’s kind of the approach I took when I moved to Los Angeles in 1998, I knew this wasn’t going to be an overnight thing. I knew whatever you do in life. You got to, you know, put the time and you got to put the work in. It’s not going to come to you, you know, easy. So, I went in with that attitude. And, yeah, I mean, there were, there were times, you know, four or five years in, I was like, “Man, I got, I got all this material, but I’m still waiting tables at the Four Seasons Hotel. When is this going to kind of click for me?” But, you know, patience for me was really key, and the only thing you could really control is writing material and performing. That’s the only thing you could you know; the rest is kind of up in the air. So as long as I concentrated on the craft, I felt like I would kind of rise through the ranks of being a comedian and selling tickets. I mean, the whole idea when I moved out to Los Angeles was just to make a living doing stand-up. I didn’t have any dreams of doing arenas. I don’t even think that was a possibility. Only a few comedians at the time in 1998 have sold out arenas, and I was just looking to do what I love and put food on the table doing it, so everything else has been kind of gravy for me.

Last month, you and your wife Lana celebrated 11 years, congratulations, what did you two do on your special day?

We went to Mexico. We took the family to Mexico, and kind of celebrated our anniversary there. It’ll be 11 years. I’ve known Lana for 15 years. She’s been an unbelievable wife and a mother. We have two small kids, five and seven. So she holds down the house while I’m on the road, sometimes they come out, which is nice.

They came up in New York City to spend time with me there. It’s been a really, really great yin and yang with her. I think you need a partner in life that understands what you’re trying to do, and vice versa. Obviously we miss each other, but she’s been extremely understanding of the schedule and the travel. But, you know, we work hard and we play hard. When we have time off, we’re with our kids and we’re enjoying them. Also for my birthday in July, we went to New York City, just her and I for three days to kind of enjoy ourselves. Because I think we as a family, you need that time to bond with your partner.

Now its time for some Fast Facts:

I heard that one of your favorite foods is pizza. What’s on your perfect pizza?

So, like a margarita pizza, very simple, just cheese sauce and fresh basil. I don’t like the basil cut up on the pizza. I like it just whole and not cooked. When they take it out of the the oven, I just like a large portion of basil sprinkled on there. So yeah, I’m not one of these guys that I do like mushrooms every now and then, but very simple.

Since we are in the school season, your favorite and least favorite school subject? 

I was really, really good at math, but actually so good that I thought I was going to be an accountant. So in my freshman year of college, I majored in accounting, and found out really quickly that my math skills were not as good as I thought. My worst subject was science. I didn’t like biology or any of the dissecting of frogs or anything like that.

One city that you have never been to but looking forward to traveling to on tour

Youngstown, Ohio, where a lot of Italians are or I feel like I’ve always heard of Youngstown. It was a thriving metropolis at one point, with a lot of people living there, and now not so much. But sometimes I like going to cities that are not so heavily populated. DC, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, they’re all great, but sometimes you like going to some of these smaller markets and entertaining the people that might not get a chance to see some premium entertainment.

Favorite show that you are looking forward to watching in the fall?

TV shows in the fall? I’m not a big TV guy, although I do like documentaries. My favorites that comes to mind are mystery documentaries. Just last night, I started watching the WWE documentary about Vince McMahon. I love that. Anything with Michael Jordan since I’m from Chicago.

If you want to see if Sebastian is coming to your town, go to Sebastianlive.com – For my DMVers, go to ticketmaster.com to get your tickets for the It Ain’t Right Tour with Sebastian!

About The Author

Dean Rogers

Editor-in-Chief/Entertainment Reporter

I knew early on that I wanted to take my place among the stars. One day, my mother saw me reading The Washington Post at a very young age. Who would have known that it would be the building blocks of my journey? Since that day, I dedicated my life to learn all that is learnable. I read everything from encyclopedias, to books, to dictionaries, to magazines. I’m also an avid consumer of television, with my favorite genre being game shows. If you’ve seen me on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Wheel of Fortune, then you know that this interest has served me well!

My unique style of reporting began back in junior high school, when I started to chronicle the events that shaped my life. Whether it was the annual family vacation or the local science fiction convention, I shot numerous pictures and recorded my thoughts so I could truly appreciate the history. During my senior year at Friendly High, I wrote what was to be my first masterpiece, “Advanced Space Academy – A One Week Journey.” I sent the eleven-page article back to the U.S. Space Camp staff. The article was highly praised for being “one of the best written articles in the history of U.S. Space Camp.” From then on, I knew what I wanted to do for rest of my life — to be a reporter.

Since then, I have trained in Broadcast Journalism at Bowie State University (2008) in Bowie, MD earning a B.S. in Communications. I gained experience in news production and editing through field experiences with Bowie Community Media Corporation, Prince George’s Community Television, and Bowie State University Television. I also wrote scripts for a variety of quiz shows for over five years.

As a lifelong movie buff, I now see close to 100 films every year. I took this love of movies to the next step when I became a co-host for Eclipse Magazine TV in the fall of 2005. While at EMTV, I interviewed celebrities, worked red carpets, and attended a wide variety of movie screenings. In January 2009, I took a leap of faith and started my own entertainment news magazine, The Rogers Revue. Shortly afterward, my life-long journey of studying the silver screen and writing about what I learned finally earned me a place in the Washington Area Film Critics Association.

All of this has led me here, giving you the latest entertainment news for the DMV and the entire nation, and I am truly excited for whatever will come next.

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