We really like Saturday Night Live's resident young person Pete Davidson (seriously, he's 22, it makes no sense), who is already in his third year on the show. Despite the fact he only does one impression (a one second Al Pacino one), he's forged his own place at SNL mostly by exploiting his easygoing, weed-friendly shtick and sticking to his brutally honest stand-up persona. There is one topic of which Davidson is less-than-easygoing: his hometown of Staten Island.
Making fun of SI has become a major part of his comedy routine, but it doesn't seem like it's just a joke. In a revealing interview with Uproxx, Davidson went to town on SI: "F*ck them. They all suck. They have nothing to do with me or my success. It’s a terrible borough, filled with terrible people. A f*cking tidal wave could take out Staten Island and I wouldn’t even move in my sleep. In fact I would sleep better. F*ck Staten Island. A bunch of Trump-supporting f*cking jerk offs. F*ck them. End quote."
Davidson noted that his mother still lives there "because she’s too f*cking stupid to realize she shouldn’t." He also vented about some of the people he grew up with there, and how almost ruined comedy for him: "It’s just hard to explain to people that you do stand up without them being f*cking f*ck faces about it. Yeah. It’s annoying. It’s like “You do stand up, tell me a joke. You’re not funny.” People are c*nts. It’s really difficult to do anything today. Everybody’s such a f*cking c*nt," he said. "It’s like no matter, if you do anything that’s not construction in Staten Island, you’re a pussy for some reason."
He's been just as vicious about the Island in various stand-up routines: "If you don't know what Staten Island is, it's like New York's abortion that lived," he said. "There's good people everywhere, but not in Staten Island at all. Like everybody could die on Staten Island and I wouldn't lose sleep over it at all. I'd be like, 'Oh, I guess I need to find a new Xanax dealer.'"
In this clip from 2013, he added, "It's this awful place where dreams die. I'm from there, the only good thing we have are women sex offenders, I think that's awesome. It's actually why I still live there."
The rest of the Uproxx interview is worth checking out, especially the parts about how he got the SNL job (thanks to a recommendation from Bill Hader), his views on being an SNL castmember ("I really think I’m a Make-A-Wish kid"), his respect for Justin Bieber ("If I was Justin Bieber, I would’ve murdered five people already [and] been in jail."), and his many tattoos: "The solar system. F*cking rubber ducks. F*cking Harry Potter symbols. My dad’s helmet. My girlfriend’s face. I got a wolf. A watermelon emoji. It goes on and on."
[That girlfriend, by the way, is Larry David's daughter.]
