Pete Davidson was just 20 years old when he was cast on Saturday Night Live in 2014. Looking back now, he says that due to his lack of comedy experience, he may have rubbed some of the castmembers the wrong way.
“You got to remember, everyone there did Second City, improv, worked so hard,” Davidson said while appearing on Wednesday’s The Breakfast Club radio show. “I’m not saying I didn’t work hard, but I was only doing comedy for three, four years.”
Despite his fears, Davidson clarified that no one from the show “was outrightly mean” to him and none of his former co-stars have publicly said they believe he didn’t deserve the gig.
Davidson said he saw himself as this “kid from Staten Island that’s just talking shit.” Meanwhile, many of his SNL co-stars were “10, 15 years older than me and working so hard.”
He also said that many SNL castmembers were not paid “great” for “five or six years,” which was one of the reasons he likely believed that his co-workers didn’t like him.
“At the time, you weren’t allowed to do stuff outside of the show that was a payday,” he claimed. “It was like the Yankees — no beards. You gotta dress up to go to the afterparty and all this shit. So I think I did rub people the wrong way, and I think it was just annoying for the cast.”
He then added that “the show as a whole loved” the attention he brought them amid his highly publicized personal life because “people are talking about SNL.”
“Not that they weren’t — I don’t want someone on YouTube to be like, ‘Motherfucker thinks he’s the reason,’” the King of Staten Island star clarified. “I brought a lot of pop culture into the show. I made it sort of a tabloid-y, trendy thing, unintentionally.”
Davidson explained that he was “embarrassed” to be seen as a rookie on the show and felt that he wasn’t recognized for “any of the work I was doing.”
“They were like, ‘That’s the fuck stick,’ and that hurt so much,” he recalled. “And I think after, like, a year or two, everyone saw how sad I was about it and embarrassed. Because I was never on Instagram flexing that lifestyle at all, I was very embarrassed by it. So I think after a while, they understood it. But at first they were like, ‘This kid’s just a loud — this has nothing to do with SNL.’”
He left the show after eight seasons in 2022 and even said goodbye on the “Weekend Update” segment during the season’s finale. “I appreciate SNL always having my back and allowing me to work on myself and grow,” Davidson said at the time. “Thank you to Lorne [Michaels] for never giving up on me or judging me even when everyone else was and for believing in me and allowing me to have a place that I could call home with memories that will last a lifetime. So, thank you guys.”
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