Pete Davidson Says SNL Poking Fun at His Dating Life Made Him Feel Like a ‘Loser’

If you ask Pete Davidson, too much attention has been put on his love life in recent years. The actor and funnyman is best known for his rise on Saturday Night Live, where he performed sketch comedy from 2014 until 2022. Now that he’s stepped away from the series, Davidson is opening up a bit on how it felt to sometimes be the subject of jokes on the very same show he was a part of. While he notes he’s grateful for SNL and is “cool” with her former co-stars, the Bodies Bodies Bodies star admits that he sometimes felt like a “loser” when he’d get made fun of in sketches he wasn’t even involved with.

“When it’s your own show, and I’ll be sitting in the back watching the cold open and [it’s] topical political humor or whatever in the culture, and they’re making fun of you and you gotta walk out and do a sketch next and hit your mark — the show just made fun of you, so why are they going to laugh at you? They just dogged you,” Davidson said on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast, via TooFab. “[It’s] f**king confusing because it’s the nature of entertainment…. It was a really difficult thing to do. You feel insecure. You feel like a small person.”

Davidson also spoke about how it felt to spend years working on his craft only for his personal life to get more attention. He says that’s a big motivator for why he’s trying to get more into dramatic acting, as he wants to prove he’s much more than the “big idiot” who smokes pot.

“Suddenly you’re in this zeitgeist and that has nothing to do with the work. And that’s a really sh*tty feeling,” Davidson says. “I became more known before the work was there, but I was always working… That’s why I’m trying to… just act, be an actor in something and not just be what people think is me.”

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Pete Davidson Doesn’t Get Why People Care Who He Dates

Speaking on his love life, Davidson suggested he never understood to begin with why it has generated so many headlines. He doesn’t feel that he’s been around much more than most other people his age, and while many of the women he’s dated have been celebrities, Davidson doesn’t feel that it’s interesting enough to spend so much time talking about.

As Davidson says, “I’m in my 20’s and I’ve dated people. And for some reason, that’s very crazy and interesting to people. I don’t think it’s interesting. I’ve been in show business for, like, half my life almost — for 14 or 15 years and on a national TV show. In 12 years I’ve dated 10 people. I don’t think that’s that crazy, but to some people, that’s very interesting. That became all anyone would talk about.”

Davidson can be seen in the upcoming series Bupkis, which also stars Joe Pesci and Edie Falco. It premieres on Peacock on May 4, 2023.