Steve Buscemi has revealed how he and his family actually pronounce their last name – and the answer is different to the way his fans say it.
Throughout his glittering decades-long career, conventional wisdom has held that the Fargo star’s surname sounds like: ‘Boo-SHEM-ee.’
The 67-year-old has heard a variety of other pronunciations, to the point that the subject became grist for comedy during one of his latest acting appearances.
He recently had a cameo as himself on Seth Rogen‘s Apple TV+ sitcom The Studio, playing a scene in which no one can figure out how to say ‘Buscemi.’
Now Steve himself has dished that he has drifted between various ways of sounding out his surname, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Although he likes the common way of saying it – ‘Boo-SHEM-ee’ – he himself said it another way while growing up in a half-Sicilian family in 1960s Brooklyn.
Steve Buscemi has revealed how he and his family actually pronounce their last name – and the answer is different to the way his fans say it
The conversation began when Jimmy brought up the scene in The Studio, in which one character ‘said Brush-KEM-ee, like bruschetta.’
‘That’s the only one, yeah, I didn’t like that one,’ admitted the Boardwalk Empire star, although he dissolved into giggles at the memory.
‘Boo-SHEMI-ee, that’s – I like that,’ Steve then explained, adding: ‘Well, that is the Italian way to say it, but I just didn’t grow up that way.’
The Horace & Pete star revealed: ‘Growing up, we said BEW-sem-ee, which is like, I can’t even do that anymore so now I say Boo-SEM-ee.’
Steve shared to the late-night host: ‘Yeah, I sort of take a little bit of each pronunciation. I don’t know how to say my own name.’
During his early days as a comic – largely as part of a double-act with future Sons of Anarchy star Mark Boone Jr – he ‘shortened it to Boose, and you can imagine the fun that MCS had with that,’ Steve gamely recalled.
His revelation came one day after Denzel Washington dropped the bombshell that his name was originally also pronounced differently than the way fans now say it.
He shared that his name was at first said: ‘DEN-zull,’ but his mother changed it to: ‘Den-ZELLE,’ to distinguish him from his father, who had the same name.
Throughout his glittering decades-long career, conventional wisdom has held that the Fargo star’s surname sounds like: ‘Boo-SHEM-ee’; pictured in June at the Tribeca Festival
His revelation came one day after Denzel Washington dropped the bombshell that his name was originally also pronounced differently than the way fans now say it
Last month Kirsten Dunst shared that ‘everyone messes up my name,’ explaining that the correct pronunciation is: ‘KEER-sten,’ via Town & Country
‘My mother would say: “DEN-zull!” and we both show up. So she said: “From now on, you’re Den-ZELLE. That’s how it got pronounced Den-ZELLE,’ he said.
‘She said: “You’re Den-ZELLE. You’re DEN-zull, and you’re Den-ZELLE,”‘ the Training Day star said in a Tuesday night interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Last month Kirsten Dunst shared that ‘everyone messes up my name,’ explaining that the correct pronunciation is: ‘KEER-sten,’ via Town & Country.
However she has had to ‘give up,’ she said. ‘I don’t care. I’ll answer to KRIS-ten, KUR-sten, KEER-sten, which is how you say my name but I don’t blame people.’
