Pete Davidson on “SNL”
Courtesy of NBC
For the premiere of the 49th season, Saturday Night Live did away with its regular sketch that parodied the week’s news. Instead, host Pete Davidson, with a rare calm demeanor, gave a solemn, cool opening speech about the Israel-Hamas war.
“This week we have seen the horrific images and stories from Israel and Gaza. And I know what you’re thinking. “Who better to comment on this than Pete Davidson?” says Davidson, who shares a personal connection to the ongoing trauma. “Well, in many ways I’m a good person to talk about this because when I was seven years old my father was killed in a terrorist attack. So I know something about what that’s like.” (Scott Davidson was a New York City firefighter who died on September 11, 2001.)
Davidson didn’t stop and continued talking, returning to his perspective on the violence in Israel and Gaza. “I have seen so many terrible images of suffering children this week, Israeli and Palestinian children. It took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer like this, especially not children.”
He shared an anecdote about how he became an informal comedy student. “After my father died, my mother tried just about everything she could to cheer me up. I remember one day when I was eight years old when she got me what she thought was a Disney movie, but it was actually the Eddie Murphy stand-up special “Delirious.” We played it in the car on the way home but when she heard what Eddie Murphy said she tried to take it away but then she noticed something. For the first time in a long time I laughed again.”
“I don’t understand it, I really don’t understand it, I will never understand it, but sometimes comedy really is the only way through tragedy. My heart goes out to everyone whose lives were destroyed this week. But tonight I’m going to do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy: and that’s try to be funny,” Davidson says.
Then, without batting an eyelid, he says, “Remember, I said try.”
Davidson’s tasteful joke was well received by the audience. He accepted the applause and opened his first appearance as host, like so many before him. “And live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
After SNL’s opening sequence, the comedian finally took the venerable Studio 8H stage as host after his May 6 show was canceled due to the writers’ strike. This week, Davidson went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and talked about how his second chance came about. He told Fallon that Lorne Michaels sent him “a classic Lorne-esque text message,” in which the executive producer wrote, “Rumor has it that you’re the host of the premiere. … I think it’s true because I started it.”
The SNL alum opened the show with a monologue about bonding with his sister the first time they watched Game of Thrones together. “I think we should have a better relationship,” Davidson says. “You know, me and my sister have nothing in common. You know, she assists in brain surgery and I’m a drug addict.” As the siblings delve into the series, he admits he was surprised that there were “hardly any dragons” but “so much incest… lots of incest.” In expected locker room humor, Davidson says he “threw out a feeler.” He even broke down at the ridiculousness of the joke, which ended with him admitting: “Ah, I probably wouldn’t get her, I’m too insecure.”
The New York native switched gears and returned to his derogatory humor about growing up in Staten Island. “If you don’t know what Staten Island is, it’s the only island in the world that somehow has a worse reputation than Epstein,” Davidson says. “But on Staten Island the kids are harassing the priests. Everything is upside down down there.”
The 29-year-old then told his “origin story” as a stand-up comedian. “I remember the first night I wanted to do a stand-up show. I used to have sex with this girl in my car because it’s like a condo on Staten Island. My Two Bedroom Cherokee with a View! This girl was amazing. She was just a sex friend and it was her idea. You know, they don’t make them like that anymore. Good old girls.”
Davidson goes on to explain that their situation would normally end with what he called “one-slice door-to-door pizza.” But as his, um, car date came to an end, he forgot that he was expected on a comedy stage in Manhattan. Then she said to him, “The coolest thing anyone has ever said to me… ‘Hey, maybe one day I’ll watch TV with my husband.’ You come over, and then I turn to my husband and say, ‘Hey, I banged this guy.'” Thrilled by her openness, Davidson drove happily to his first gig, knowing his dream was within reach. “I remember being really excited, like I was going to be a comedian,” he added.
Davidson ended his opening monologue with an unfortunate turn of events, but he delivered it in his deadpan comedic style. “She kind of predicted the future. I got on TV, which is very cool. She tragically died of an overdose two years later. Yes. Very sad. She was one for two,” says the actor. “I found out the whole thing was messed up, I found out because I was actually watching TV with my girlfriend and she showed up. Then I turn to my girlfriend and say, “Hey, I banged that girl.”
Classic Pete Davidson.
If there was a prize for winning best skit that parodied the Swifties’ invasion on Monday Night Football, SNL scored the big win with a tongue-in-cheek appearance from NFL star Travis Kelce. He ended the skit with Davidson as sideline reporter Kenny Ditullio, dressed in a pink fur-trimmed hat and several Taylor Swift Eras Tour sweatshirts, after checking his game analysis for updates on whether or not Swift was at the game. His fellow athletes, which included the lisping Michael Strahan, played by Devon Walker, disrupted the broadcast by turning into a Taylor-fest, discussing secret songs, brandishing friendship bracelets and spontaneously singing along to “Bad Blood.” Kelce was then touted as “someone who actually wants to discuss football.”
That wasn’t the only sighting near Taylor. The Eras Tour movie queen came on stage to coyly announce Ice Spice’s second SNL appearance (but I’m sure the audience was hoping for a live rendition of her summer hit “Karma”).
The first “Weekend Update” with Michael Che and Colin Jost reflected on the rising tensions in Gaza, with Jost declaring, “It’s been a terrible week for the world.”
In a section titled “Middle East Crisis,” he moved on to the publicly shared opinions of “random idiots who like to share crazy thoughts wherever they can.” One joke said that a Yelp review of Buffalo Wild Wings left a 1,000-word essay about “How I would fix Palestine,” and another referenced former President Donald Trump, who founded Hezbollah, a branch of Iran supported militant group, Hezbollah confused name of the ghost from Aladdin.