About My Father Director Laura Terruso Took Inspiration From Sebastian Maniscalco’s Instagram

About My Father heads into theaters this weekend, dramatizing elements of the relationship between comedian Sebastian Masicalco and his father, Salvo (played by Robert De Niro). With Maniscalco playing himself in the film, About My Father has a unique reverence for its real-life story — and apparently, that also extended into the research stage. In a recent interview with ComicBook.com‘s Chris Killian, About My Father director Laura Terruso revealed how the film’s research process came to be, by combining interviews with a deep dive into Maniscalco’s Instagram account.

“We prepped this movie during quarantine, so I ended up — I decided to do oral history interviews with Sebastian’s father,” Terruso said in our interview, which you can check out above. “We did about four hours of recording, where I just talked to him about his life and recorded it all, and sent that to Bob so that he could watch it, get a sense of his life, his history, his mannerisms, how he speaks. I was already a fan of Sebastian’s going into this, but I became a super fan. I did the deep digs where I would watch his Instagram stories and everything, so that we can use all this stuff from his life in the movie. Like there’s this moment where he’s in a Christmas tree costume, [that] came straight from his Instagram stories where he’s like, ‘Look at the things I do for my wife.’ It’s all from his real life.”

What is About My Father about?

In About My Father, Sebastian informs his traditional Italian immigrant father Salvo about his plan to propose to his American girlfriend, and Salvo insists on joining them for a weekend with her parents. Despite the clash between their two cultures and initial perception of having nothing in common, they eventually become a single, unified family by the end of the summer holiday weekend. The film will also star Leslie Bibb, Anders Holm, David Rasche, and Kim Cattrall.

“Stand-up didn’t really have a story here; the story was the relationship between my wife and I,” Maniscalco told ComicBook.com. “And me being a hotel general manager is what I would’ve done if I wasn’t a stand-up. So that’s where that came from, but I didn’t see stand-up being an integral part of the movie. What I did for a living really didn’t matter. I was more about the relationship with dad, and going to meet my wife’s family.” 

About My Father is set to be released exclusively in theaters on May 26th.