Pete Davidson, 31, confessed that he had a “tough time” during the eight years he was in the cast of Saturday Night Live.
Davidson was just 20 years old when he joined SNL in 2014, making him one of the youngest-ever comedians on the show. At the time, he was so young that, until he saw the call for auditions, he thought SNL had already ended, Davidson told the hosts of The Breakfast Club comedy podcast on Wednesday.
“Everyone at SNL was 10, 15 years older than me,” Davidson said, “it’s just hard to, you know, relate.”
“I would be like, ‘hey, you guys wanna go smoke weed?’ And they’re like, ‘we’re having our first child,’” Davidson joked. “It’s tough to make friends.”
Davidson said that he did have a few mentor figures, but that the show environment made it difficult to foster deep friendships. “You gotta remember SNL, it’s competitive. It’s not like a team sport. It’s who could be the best this week and have their stuff on the show,” Davidson said.
“I think I did rub people the wrong way,” he reflected. Many of his peers had spent their careers cutting their teeth at the country’s premier comedy clubs and improv groups, he said. In contrast, Davidson was relatively new to the business when he joined the SNL cast, and he proceeded to garner more attention than many of his fellow castmates.
Part of his popularity, he suspects, came from his youth, as he brought younger viewers to the show. “I brought a lot of pop culture into the show. Like I made it sort of like a tabloid-y, like trendy thing, unintentionally.”
But Davidson felt guilty that he had become so successful so early in his career. “They were just like, ‘oh, that’s the, you know, f— stick. Yeah.’ And that hurt so much.” Over time, however, Davidson said the resentment started to die down. “I think after a year or two, everyone saw how sad I was about it and embarrassed,” he said.
Davidson soon became a celebrity in his own right, and intrigue into his personal life ramped up. He became known for dating beautiful high-profile Hollywood stars, including Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande. In 2018, a rumor circulated that he is well-endowed, which was widely reported by numerous tabloids and pop culture news outlets.
Davidson said the attention to his dating life was unwelcome. “Like the sexualization of me, like if that was a girl, you know, people would be like—there’ll be a march for it,” he said.
Now, like his SNL castmates from years ago, the 31-year-old comedian is settling down and is expecting his first child with his girlfriend, Elsie Hewitt, 29.
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