‘SNL’ Star Pete Davidson Noticeably Absent After Controversial Comments Slamming Show

Pete Davidson was noticeably absent from this weekend’s Saturday Night Live episode, even failing to appear in pre-taped sketches. Davidson’s relationship with the show has been tense ever since he bashed it during a Feb. 24 interview with Charlamagne Tha God. It appears the 26-year-old was not even at the studio Saturday night, as he was not present during the cast’s sign off.

Davidson has been a part of the show since 2014, when he was 20. He became the youngest comedian to join the cast in the show’s history. However, in his interview with Charlamagne, Davidson said he no longer liked being on the show because he is frequently the butt of jokes.

“It’s a hard thing to do ’cause you don’t want to ever pull the trigger too early. But everybody’s always been like, ‘You’ll know when you know and it’ll be all right,” Davidson said. “I personally think I should be done with that show because they make fun of me on it… I don’t know whose team they’re playing for, really — if I’m the joke or I’m in on the joke.”

Davidson went on to say the show paints him as “this big dumb idiot,” specifically pointing out sketches where “Chad & JLo,” where all he does is say “OK, sure.”

“I think everybody outgrows it and I think for what I could do on the show — which is just barely anything and it’s just ‘Weekend Update’ and I feel like I’ve done, like, 30 of those and I just feel like, yeah, I’ve done as much as I can over there but happy to be there as long as [creator] Lorne [Michaels] likes me,” Davidson said.

Despite this, Davidson said he considers SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels a “father figure” who “has treated me with nothing but love.”

This was the second SNL episode since Charlamagne published Davidson’s comments. He did appear in the Feb. 29 episode, but he skipped out on the after party.

“A lot of the cast members who were there noted that Pete’s absence at the party was due, in fact, to his comments last week and the tension with him and other cast members,” an insider told Us Weekly.

Davidson has begun racking up acting gigs outside SNL more often. He just released a Netflix standup special, Pete Davidson: Alive from New York and appears in the upcoming DC Comics movie The Suicide Squad. He also stars in and co-wrote The King of Staten Island with director Judd Apatow. The movie, Apatow’s first fictional film since 2015’s Trainwreck, will open on June 19 and also stars Marisa Tomei, Steve Buscemi, Bill Burr and Davidson’s friend Machine Gun Kelly.

Davidson also guest starred in Sunday night’s episode of The Rookie, playing the half-brother of Nathan Fillion’s character in the ABC series.

SNL returns on March 28 on NBC with John Krasinski hosting and Dua Lipa performing.

Photo credit: NBC