Steve Buscemi Reveals We’ve All Been Pronouncing His Name Wrong

Steve Buscemi has some advice for anyone who is still struggling to pronounce his name.

During an appearance on the Wednesday, Sept. 3 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Buscemi, 67, discussed his cameo in The Studio, with host Jimmy Fallon mentioning the scenes where the cast can’t figure out how to say the actor’s last name.

“At one point, they said ‘Brusch-kemi,’ like bruschetta,” Fallon laughed, as Buscemi replied, “I don’t like that one.”

“Boo-shemi, I like that,” the Wednesday star admitted, adding, “That is the Italian way to say it, but I just didn’t grow up that way.”

“Growing up, we said Bue-semi, which I can’t even do that anymore,” the actor said.

These days, he tends to pronounce his surname like “boo” and “semi,” telling Fallon, “I sort of take a little bit from each pronunciation.”

“I don’t know how to say my own name,” Buscemi joked.

As Fallon questioned which surname he went by when he previously did stand-up, the star responded, “I shortened it to Buse,” adding, “You can imagine the fun that MCs had with that.”

The lesson in saying Buscemi’s last name comes after Denzel Washington made headlines for revealing most people had been saying his name incorrectly during an appearance on the Tuesday, Sept. 2 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

He explained his name after host Jimmy Kimmel noted that there were “currently four players named Denzel in the NFL.” He added, “There weren’t that many before your first Oscar [award]. There was zero in 1987.”

“I know. There’s a lot of Denzels now,” the actor, 70, chimed in.  

“And this is how you know they named themselves after me, because my name is not pronounced Den-zel. My name is pronounced Den-zuhl,” he continued.

Washington went on to say that since he and his father shared the exact same name — with him being “Junior” and his father “Senior” — both of them “would show up” when his mother, Lennis, shouted for “Denzel.” 

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This prompted her to give him a different pronunciation of his name to tell them apart. 

“So she said, ‘From now on, you’re Den-zel,’” he recalled, using the longer “e” vowel sound that he is known for today. “That’s how it got pronounced ‘Denzel.’ ”

“She said [to me], ‘You’re Den-zel.’ [And to my father,] ‘You’re Den-zuhl…,’ ” Washington said using the two pronunciations.