Pete Davidson is promoting The Pickup on Amazon, with Eddie Murphy and Keke Palmer. Pete is just 31, which is surprising to me because he’s been famous for so long. He’s expecting his first child, with his girlfriend, Elsie Hewitt, and is sporting a mustache. Pete had an interview on The Breakfast Club this week, and is making the most headlines for talking about how the Big D-ck Energy comments back in his Ariana Grande era hurt his feelings. Ariana of course fed into those stories by tweeting about it and including a segment in her “thank u, next” video talking about an ex’s big one. I was impressed with how open Pete was on The Breakfast Club, but he’s been like that for years and it’s the reason he’s famous. Here’s some of what Pete said and the video is below.
In a Wednesday, Aug. 31, episode of The Breakfast Club, Davidson, 31, reflected on the attention he received throughout his early career years on Saturday Night Live, specifically for his romantic life. Davidson recalled to Charlamagne Tha God, “I brought a lot of pop culture into the show, like I made it [a] sort of tabloidly, trendy thing unintentionally.”
“Also, I was embarrassed by it because… no one talked about any work I was doing,” he shared. “They were just like, ‘Oh, that’s the f— stick.’ And that hurt so much.”
He added that SNL crew members, friends and family noticed how “sad” and “embarrassed” he was about the attention. “No one was outrightly mean by any means,” Davidson said.
Charlamagne, 47, chimed in, initially appearing confused at Davidson’s discomfort. “You was banging a lot of hot chicks and you had a 10-inch p-nis,” he said.
Davidson sighed and laughed, “You know, on paper, that sounds great.”
The comedian elaborated, “It’s embarrassing, ’cause, you know… It’s Hollywood. Everybody f—- everyone.” He questioned, “Why are they focusing on me?” adding that he thinks the viral attention was because he is “not Glen Powell handsome.”
“I’m just like this dude that tells d— jokes and is a drug addict,” Davidson quipped.
Davidson went on to say, “I don’t want to victimize myself in any way because I’m cool, but the sexualization of me — if that was a girl, people would be like, there would be a march for it… Seriously. You’re just talking about my d— all day.”
When asked where “big d— energy” started, Davidson replied, “Uh it was I think it was like the New York Times or something when I started dating someone that I guess they considered out of my league, which I think everyone is out of my league, but you know, uh they were like, ‘This guy must have big d— energy.’ And then someone confirmed it.”
The comedian also recalled how the spotlight on his personal life made navigating relationships challenging.
“It just got to a point where I was… I got really tired of my whole career just being like my personal life,” he said. “And living through that is it’s sort of traumatic. Like not to be like lame, but like it’s traumatic to live in your own crap all the time.”
Pete also explained why he’s not on Instagram anymore, because he didn’t want to be as accessible and he would just focus on the negative comments. As for his hurt at the BDE comments and how everyone was talking about his love life, he revealed years ago that he has borderline personality disorder, which is often characterized by love bombing, idealizing and then discarding partners (my words). I’m sure there’s some of that tied up in him hating the attention on his love life. On TBC Pete said he quit doing Bupkis because it got too enmeshed with his personal life. “I got really tired of my whole career just being like my personal life… and living through that is sort of traumatic.”
I understand what he’s saying about how hurtful it is when people focus on his d-ck. I grew up with the narrative that men like it when we talk about their d-cks. Younger men are pushing back against some of the toxicity around their sexuality and I appreciate Pete doing that here. It sounds like Pete is also stung by the memes about how he scores just about every woman. He did show up at countless public places with so many hot women. (People forget about Kate Beckinsale, but those two were all over the place for a few weeks.) It looked like he wasn’t trying to lie low at all, although he mentioned on TBC how hard it was to navigate dates. He said he did the Reformation underwear campaign because he wanted to capitalize on the narrative about him. You can see the growth in him as he’s gotten sober and is being more thoughtful about his career.
Here’s Pete’s interview. He covers the BDE stuff around minute 20. Around minute 31 he discusses his Hillary Clinton tattoo and why he’s not removing it. That part is well worth watching and respect to him for that. At minute 43 he talks about how much he looks forward to being a dad. He said some outlets knew that Elsie was pregnant early on but that they kept it quiet until the two of them could announce it themselves. The tabloids kind of forced their hand.
Photos of Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande are from 2018. Credit: Backgrid, Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Todd Williamson/January Images/Backgrid