In the new, well-reviewed family comedy About My Father, actor and stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco plays a boutique hotel manager who is on the brink of popping the question to his girlfriend, played by Leslie Bibb.
However, when she suggests he bring his eccentric, blue-collar Italian dad (Robert De Niro) to meet the rest of her affluent family over a holiday weekend, feathers figuratively — and literally, thanks to the family’s prized peacocks — fly.
For Bibb, it meant she got to have “frickin’ icon” Kim Cattrall play her senator mom, Tigger, and screen legend De Niro as her potential father-in-law. “I know, right?” Bibb enthuses. And “earlier in the year I’d worked with Melissa McCarthy and I was like: This has been a hell of a year. Like 2021. We’re in a pandemic. But Jesus, this is pretty fricking cool.”
Bibb continues, “I was so excited to work with her. She’s a frickin’ icon. And she’s so kind and so funny. When I first saw the movie … I was like, she and David [Cattrall’s onscreen husband, David Rasche], and then she and Bob together, are so hysterical.”
De Niro’s Salvo is a hairdresser by trade, and one scene has Cattrall’s character needing a glow-up before a TV interview, so Tigger asks him to do the honors. “It’s wonderful to have your head massaged by Robert De Niro. I highly recommend it,” the former Sex and the City star says of the “delicious” scene.
She adds, “I didn’t know where that scene was going to go, and I don’t think he did either. And that was the exciting thing about it.”
About My Father opens Friday.
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