“I’ve had a really weird year,” says Pete Davidson in the opening moments of his new Netflix special, Pete Davidson Presents: The Best Friends. Well, that’s an understatement.
Just to fill you in, Pete was previously one of the star comedians of Saturday Night Live – which he’s now left – and over the past few years, somehow managed to laugh some of the hottest women in the world into a relationship, including the singer Ariana Grande, who famously dubbed his magnetic charm as “BDE” (Big Dick Energy, for the uninitiated).
This energy hit its apex when it was revealed that Pete was dating Kim Kardashian (still not technically divorced from Kanye West at this point) and Kanye was apoplectic about it. Ye, in not so much BDE, but FJE (Fathers-4-Justice-like energy), launched into a tirade on social media about Pete, who he dubbed “Skete”, and encouraged his fans to harass him. That was just the start: then he decapitated and buried a claymation lookalike of Pete in the video for Eazy.
After a few retorts from Pete, asking him to get treatment for his mental health (then hitting back with the fact that he was “in bed with your wife”) things went quiet for a bit. Kim Kardashian no doubt asked the pair to stop airing their dirty laundry online, in the presence of millions of fans. Since then, Pete’s laid pretty low.
Until now that is. With the launch of his first post-SNL comedy shows, he gives an insight into what life is like for him now in one of the world’s biggest love triangles, and how he’s coping in what he calls “before my life was ruined” and, weirdly, his thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein. Here’s the most controversial bits from his scathing return to form:
On that sexual health scare
“I had an AIDS scare this year. Yeah, I did. And you’re like, ‘Pete, Wow. What’s going on in your life? Are you sharing needles? You’re doing heroin? You have tons of unprotected sex?” No, Kanye told me I had AIDS and he’s a genius.
“I was like, ‘Oh... I better call my doctor. The guy who made 'College Dropout' thinks I have AIDS.’ So I went to the doctor, because I was like, maybe he’s right, I don’t know? But my doctor told me I don’t have AIDS, I just look like I have it. It’s a completely different thing.”
“You have AIDS. It’s just such a ’90s, early 2000s thing to say. John Mulaney called me. He’s like, ‘AIDS? You should spread a rumour that he has polio!’”
On Ye’s next move
“Does anybody else secretly hope that, like, Kanye pulls like a Mrs. Doubtfire? I come home one day, and they’re like, ‘this is the new housekeeper.’ And, he’s like, ‘What’s up fam?’”
On Jeffrey Epstein
“I’ve been trying to make a joke about Epstein’s plane funny. [But] in any room that I ever pitch this joke on… hear me out! The guy, obviously a bad dude, you got to get that out the way: bad dude, shouldn’t do that stuff. But I didn’t get why everyone was so angry at all the dudes who took a free plane ride. Like, the Jeffrey Epstein doc came out and this dude raped and did a bunch of terrible stuff to little young girls and then people would be like, ‘Can you believe Chris Tucker rode on that plane?’. It’s like, yeah, have you ever tried to fly commercial? From fucking LA to New York? It’s a fucking nightmare.
“I know a dude who gives me free plane rides. I don’t really know what he does, he tells me he’s in the ‘waste-management business’. ‘I’m in waste-management. I’m a garbage-man.’ I go, ‘Yeah, tons of garbage-men have private jets, so…’. I just don’t ask, I’m just like, whatever. Because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a plane with a guy. You don’t have to support what the guy does. So I fly with one paedophile, right? But if you fly commercial, there’s at least, like, five paedophiles. And you don’t know who they are. I know who mine is, he’s right in front of me, with a mimosa and some strawberry chocolates.”
On his life being worse than Covid
“It’s like Covid happened, and then another Covid personally happened to me.”
On the curse of a Knicks game
“December 2021 was a really good month. I went to a Knicks game with my pals, Jon Stewart and Chris Rock. So we’re watching the game and it’s the game where Steph Curry breaks the three-point record and I remember he broke the record in the first quarter and we were somehow placed under the basket so in the picture that everybody put out there’s him, breaking the record, then us… and what’s so weird is since that picture, horrible things have happened to me and Chris. So Jon, if you’re watching, watch your fucking back!"
On the hatred for him on the street
“I don’t get it, a lot of people are very angry. When I go outside, it’s like 50-50. Either someone’s like “Hey man, you’re really cool, that’s great.” Or someone’s like: “Hey yo, fuck you! Fuck you! Yeah, you!” I’m always like ‘that can’t be me’.”
Pete Davidson Presents: The Best Friends is streaming on Netflix now
