This summer, comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco will host the 2019 Video Music Awards live from New Jersey.

In April, MTV announced that the VMAs would come to New Jersey for the first time on August 26. The show will be broadcast from the Prudential Center in Newark.

Maniscalco, 45, made the announcement about his hosting gig on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night. In a promotional video for the awards show that he posted to Twitter, Maniscalco guesses that rapper Cardi B is “a spice, or a supplement."

This year the comedian, who hails from Chicago, sold out Madison Square Garden for four consecutive nights. He can be seen in several comedy specials, the most recent of which was “Sebastian Maniscalco: Stay Hungry,” on Netflix. This summer and fall, he will be traveling the country for his “You Bother Me” tour.

In 2018, Maniscalco released the memoir “Stay Hungry," after which he launched a “Stay Hungry” tour, selling out five nights at Radio City Music Hall (that’s the show on Netflix). He was featured on the Forbes list of the world’s highest paid comedians in 2017 and 2018.

I want my MTV! Get ready. See you Monday, August 26th at for the @MTV @vmas! pic.twitter.com/Ym8PFK5kn8 — Sebastian Maniscalco (@SebastianComedy) June 26, 2019

Maniscalco has various connections to New Jersey by way of his film roles. He is set to play Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo in the forthcoming Martin Scorsese film “The Irishman," due out in the fall on Netflix. Gallo, a charismatic gangster from Brooklyn who inspired the 1976 Bob Dylan song “Joey,” worked for New York’s Profaci crime family (later the Colombo family).

The Scorsese movie, about Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who claimed to have killed Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) — he also took credit for killing Gallo in 1972 — was partially filmed in Paterson.

“The Irishman” also features Newark native Joe Pesci as Pennsylvania Mafia boss Russell Bufalino. Union City’s Bobby Cannavale plays Philadelphia mob captain and mentor Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio, who owned the Friendly Lounge.

In 2018, Maniscalco played Johnny Venere in the Oscar-winning Peter Farrelly movie “Green Book." The controversial film is about former “Sopranos” actor Tony “Lip” Vallelonga’s time working as a driver for black concert pianist Donald Shirley during his tour of the Jim Crow South in the 1960s.

Mahershala Ali won an Oscar for playing Shirley. Viggo Mortensen portrayed Vallelonga, an Italian-American bouncer at the Copacabana who grows to reject the racism of the Bronx community in which he lives after becoming friends with Shirley. Lip’s son, Nick Vallelonga, who grew up in Paramus, won an Oscar for co-writing the film, in which Maniscalco’s character, Lip’s brother-in-law, makes racist comments.

Clip contains profanity.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

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