Melbourne’s ‘ethnic dads’ taking Sooshi Mango on global tour
In eight years three Italian friends from the suburbs have gone from filming comedy videos in a garage to selling out stadium performances – and now, Sooshi Mango is going global.
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As Andrew Manfre drove past Rod Laver Arena every morning, he had a dream.
He owned a scrap metal business and wanted his bins in the arena. He can laugh at the memory now.
Andrew never dared at the time to dream of being on stage in front of 13,000 people who had paid to see him, to make them laugh.
The first shoots of what would become a cultural and comedy phenomenon began in 2015 when Andrew reached out to his best friends Joe and Carlo Salanitri who were toying with social media videos.
The brothers posted a video to Facebook, which was based on annoying friends in cars. It scored a couple of thousand views.
Andrew was captivated by their talent, and it was something he wanted to be a part of. The comedians began meeting every Wednesday and filmed videos in the brothers’ garage.
At the time, Carlo owned a lighting shop and Joe was an MC and worked in sales.
Then one video where the boys played “ethnic dads” changed it all, racking up almost nine million views.
This was the start of comedy act Sooshi Mango, which is now selling laughs in Australia and abroad.
Sitting in the loungeroom of a classic 1960s suburban home filled with Italian ornaments, the trio, of Italian descent, say their lives have changed for the better since finding stardom.
“That first ethnic dads video kicked us off. People began sending us messages saying ‘you guys are great’, we felt that this was cool and we had an obligation to start doing these videos,” Carlo says.
Joe adds: “These characters are part of us, this is what really catapulted us.”
“To think we would sit in a bedroom in Bentleigh East when we were in our early teens and record silly things to now be where we are today is truly incredible,” Andrew chimes in.
Sooshi Mango has 600 million views on social media and two million followers, and they have sold 100,000 tickets to their shows.
Inspired by their ethnic alter egos, the lads play several characters each, including the popular roles of Italian grandparents.
The characters include Sam and Angela, played by Andrew; Vince and Carmela played by Carlo, and Joe’s Johnny and Giuseppina.
As the boys begin to transform into characters, Andrew looks into the mirror while putting on his wig.
“I love playing my ethnic dad Sam, he’s real fun. These characters allow us to be a part of who we really are, that we don’t normally show. They’re our alter ego,” he says.
Carlo says his stage character Vince was a lot like his dad, also named Vincenzo, who died four years ago, aged 83.
“Vince is a lot like my dad but he has shades of other people as well,” he muses.
Joe says: “We believe he sacrificed himself to go up there, so we can do what we’re doing down here”.
Andrew says the costumes are effortless now.
“I know when Carlo and Joe put on their wigs or when I put my shirt on or the toothpick in my mouth, it’s a transformation.”
Inspired by Joe’s son Luca, the friends named their group “Sooshi Mango”.
“My son made it up; he was three at the time,” Joe says.
“He was at home on the toilet yelling ‘Sooshi Mango’ one day I heard it.
“Carlo said at the time we have to start a page online for our comedy act and Luca was running in the background yelling out ‘Sooshi Mango, Sooshi Mango’ and that was it, it stuck.”
Last month, the hit comedy troupe also opened a restaurant in the heart of Lygon St called Johnny, Vince and Sam’s, a nod to their relatable dad characters.
They also began selling their own sangiovese and moscato wine range earlier this year and have a podcast with thousands of listeners tuning in on Listnr.
Their aspirations don’t stop there though.
After being cast in Wog Boy 3: Wog Boys Forever last year, the trio began working on their first feature film, which is expected to be released next year.
“We’re in the process of writing the film. We have a great producer on board to help us with it all,” Joe says.
“It was surreal to be part of the Wog Boy, it was another challenge and we enjoyed the process.”
Standing in the middle of a formal dining room, the boys begin to open up suitcases filled with more character props.
The three reflect on ethnic comedy in a politically correct climate, and Carlo says while he doesn’t think it is harder to be funny in this climate, “I’m more of a risk taker”.
“Today people are getting way too sensitive. People have had enough of people making noise and the pendulum is swinging back to common sense,” he says.
“Comedy shouldn’t be silenced; it helps too many people, it’s too important.”
Andrew adds: “It’s a comedian’s job to dance on the line; they go where no one else goes.
“Twenty years ago you had a lot to play with and there was a line then, but now there is a big fat line.”
The comedians put on a vintage record player, and sounds of classic Italian music fills the room. They smile as they talk about how proud their family is of their success, but joke about how it sometimes hits a bit too close to home.
“They love it and they love that we’re seeing some success,” Joe says.
Andrew adds: “I said to my dad, ‘that’s you’ and he says in his Italian accent: ‘that’s not me, that’s an older man’.”
“My aunty still has no clue that my Carmela character is based on her,” Carlo says. “She says ‘that’s not me, I don’t talk like that’!”
Joe adds: “We were all sitting around the table with family and my aunty Grace said after the show; ‘the characters are so funny but they’re not like us’. Everyone around the table just started laughing.”
Carlo adds their characters are played with the utmost “sincerity and love”.
“We absolutely adore that generation. We want to preserve it and wave the flag for it because these people came here and did something good for the country because I don’t think they get the accolades they deserve.”
Joe recalls telling his father before he died that the group had sold out eight forums.
“My dad being the classic Italian father who always wanted us to strive for more said, ‘why can’t you do 12 shows?’”
They fulfilled that goal and more. The trio broke a record becoming the first Australian comedy act to perform three sold-out shows at Rod Laver Arena.
“Guess what, we ended up doing 16 shows. He was right and he always encouraged us to be better men and to do the best we can in life; he inspires us always,” Joe adds.
Carlo says he’s a true believer in visualisation. “I pictured us being in an arena with our hands up and seeing all these people in the audience and guess what, it ended up happening,” he says
The trio will embark on a tour later this year to countries including the UK, US and Canada.
“Like any business, we want to do better every year,” Carlo says. “We always wanted to challenge ourselves to do a bigger arena.
“These … countries all have immigrants that have settled there, so it resonates with them.”
Andrew says: “There’s something very magical when people see you playing their parents. You don’t have to have lived it, when you watch it, it’s funny. We’re not saying we’re the first ones to do it here, but internationally there’s not a lot of shows like ours.”
Joe says the aim is always to try and grow. “Every year, every step always seems to not just happen, but we put seeds out and things fall into place to help with the next step,” he says.
The group say while lockdowns hurt the entertainment industry, their following on social media grew. The group didn’t want to let fans down, despite being forced to keep postponing shows due to Covid restrictions.
“We had to focus on getting content out. It was killing us to delay shows but we tried to stay positive, so we could keep our fans happy.”
But Carlo says there was an advantage: “There were so many more eyeballs on phones, so when you put something out, triple the number of people were seeing it and if it was topical it would be shared widely.”
He jokingly adds Premier Dan Andrews “wrote the content for them” during lockdown.
“We were just reflecting back a lot, of the stupidity that was being said and putting a comical spin on it,” he says.
Joe says the trio had no beef with the Premier, despite several videos poking fun at the harsh restrictions in Victoria.
“Everyone says we hate him and we don’t hate him, it was just content. He was the person saying it. If anyone else was saying those things, we would’ve been doing exactly the same thing.”
Carlo says fans still walk up to them in the street, saying the fun helped during lockdown.
“People still come up to us today and say ‘thank you, you got us through lockdown’. But I say back to our fans, ‘no, you got us through lockdown, we’re just comedians who had our hands tied’,” he says.
“Hopefully they got a laugh out of it, we didn’t think we were saving the world, but people said we made them laugh,” Joe adds.
Andrew says it was frustrating that there was no support for people in the entertainment industry during that time.
“It was dire for a lot of people, so many people suffered, it was their livelihoods,” he says.
The troupe is intimately aware of the importance of European migration to Australia during the 1950s and ’60s.
“These people have been in the country for 70 to 80 years and they’ve assimilated into society. They’re responsible for the culture, architecture and so much more,” Andrew says,
“It’s the end of the generation. When they go, there won’t be another wave, so we’re really trying to create a legacy for them, so they are remembered as well as their stories and contributions.”
Carlo adds: “Our people added a lot to the country. We’re proud to be Australians. It’s allowed us to do this.”
They speak in admiring terms of their own families, who migrated from Italy to Victoria in the late 50s and early 60s.
“We were close to our nonna and nonno, who were four streets away from us in Bentleigh East; we were very close,” Joe says.
Andrew doesn’t remember his grandfather, but cherishes the knowledge that Nonno “delayed his trip back to Italy when my mum was pregnant with me, so I got to meet him when I was born”.
Even with such success, the boys are grateful to their fans for their support over the years.
“Thank you. We’re just three Italian boys from the suburbs who were playing around with comedy and our fans have played a part in elevating us to where we are today,” they say. “Thanks from the bottom of our hearts always – and for changing our lives for the better.” ■
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