Pete is pivoting from tabloid fodder to serious actor, crediting fatherhood and sobriety for his new dramatic depth in 'How to Rob a Bank.'
Insiders say Pete is done playing the 'boyfriend of the month' role. He’s admitting his tattoos were self-harm cover-ups and calling his past drug use 'scary.'
Pete packed on 15 pounds of muscle using peptides like Sermorelin. He revealed Kanye West depicted him as a Claymation figure being beheaded in the 'Eazy' video.
Pete Davidson is finally taking his career—and his sobriety—seriously, but he’s not hiding from the chaos that got him here.
Say the name Pete Davidson and you still get the image of a man in baggy pants, arm-in-arm with the hottest woman in Hollywood. But in a candid new Variety interview, the 32-year-old comedian is tearing down that lothario facade to reveal a man who has been through the wringer. Davidson admits he hit rock bottom in the summer of 2023, after leaving Saturday Night Live.
With no structure and no projects, he spiraled into a drug haze involving ketamine, acid, and shrooms. "It got scary because I didn't feel high," Davidson confessed. "I felt high when I wasn't doing it, so I was like, this is a huge problem." It was a FaceTime call with his mother, Amy, who told him her biggest fear was seeing him on the news, that finally convinced him to check himself into rehab.
The drama isn't just internal; it’s been externalized by some of the most powerful exes in pop culture. Davidson opened up about the toxic aftermath of his relationship with Kim Kardashian, specifically the wrath of Kanye West. While Kardashian was still divorcing West, the rapper took aim at Davidson, posting threats on Instagram and depicting a Claymation version of Pete being kidnapped and beheaded in the music video for "Eazy." Davidson notes that because he was already public about his mental health struggles, Kanye's attacks felt like a direct command to "kill yourself." Despite the vitriol, Davidson remains diplomatic, suggesting West was pushed to his breaking point by people who didn't show him love.
"There’s zero way he really feels like that," Davidson said of Kanye's antisemitic rants, though he jokes he "cleared the path" for Kim's future dating life by absorbing the blow. Now, Davidson is channeling that pain into his most serious role yet in the upcoming film How to Rob a Bank. Playing Vince, a war veteran with lungs ravaged by burn pits, Davidson packed on 15 pounds of muscle.
He was refreshingly honest about the method, admitting he used peptides like Sermorelin and BPC-157 rather than just "broccoli, rice and chicken." Director David Leitch praised Davidson's warmth, noting that people feel safe around him within ten seconds. The emotional weight of the role hit home when Davidson discovered his then-partner Elsie Hewitt was pregnant with their daughter, Scottie, right before filming a heartbreaking scene where his character sings to his daughter over the phone.
"It really fucked me up," Davidson recalled, his voice cracking. "The first time I felt like a real actor because I wasn't just playing myself." Perhaps the most surprising revelation is Davidson's decision to strip away his infamous ink. He is currently removing nearly 200 tattoos, calling them "horrible" and admitting some were used to cover up self-harm scars from cutting.
However, he is keeping one specific piece of body art: a tattoo of Hillary Clinton in a power suit on his right leg. "She stays. That’s my dog.
I love Hillary, man," he joked. As he navigates fatherhood and sobriety, Davidson is tired of the media obsessing over his dating history. "I’m still only 32, but I have really crazy credits," he defended, listing collaborations with Judd Apatow, James Gunn, and Bill Hader. He’s done lobbing his trauma into the spotlight and is ready to be taken seriously as an actor, not just a tabloid headline.
