Pete Davidson is detailing his experience on indie film sets…and he’s not totally a fan. The “SNL” alum said during “Hot Ones” in the below video that “there’s not anything glamorous” about starring in independent films.
He recently appeared in TIFF 2024 indie crime comedy “Riff Raff” alongside Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Gabrielle Union, Lewis Pullman, Michael Angelo Corvino, and Davidson’s own personal icon, Bill Murray. Davidson and Murray played two gangsters who are hunting down an ex-criminal family over the holidays. Yet despite the star-studded cast, “Riff Raff” wasn’t a “comfortable” experience.
“The movie we did — it’s a tough one because it’s an indie, so there’s no budget and there’s not anything glamorous about it,” Davidson said. “No one makes money, no one’s comfortable, it’s strictly like for the art.”
Adding of working with Murray, Davidson said, “But yeah, he was like kind of captain and kind of calming me down…He’s also my dad’s favorite actor so that was a cool thing. My dad’s favorite movie was ‘Stripes,’ so I got to tell him that and that was really cool for me. […] He’s a total pro, man.”
“The Home” star further reflected on being alongside some of his favorite fellow comedians: Jim Carrey hosted the “Saturday Night Live” episode where Davidson’s “first real sketch” aired. “I was so excited because he’s Jim Carrey, one of the legends…The sketch bombed to high heavens… and it’s online if you want to watch a 20-year-old crumble with his idol,” Davidson quipped.
And a run-in with Dave Chappelle led to one of Davidson’s many now-removed tattoos. “I’ve never admitted this because it’s so humiliating, but when I was like 20, at a comedy club — it might have been the Knitting Factory when Hannibal Buress used to run it — and I did a set, I was like 19 or 20, and Chappelle was in the corner,” he said. “This was before he was back, so seeing him was like crazy, going ‘What the fuck?’ And I got off stage and he was like, ‘I watched your whole set — it was really good,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, thanks.’ I was like, ‘You know, how do you keep coming up with new stuff? I’m working on new stuff and it’s like difficult,’ and he goes, ‘Jokes come and go, but swag is forever.’ … And guess who got that tattooed on his chest? I covered it with ‘Jaws’ because I needed something huge to black it out. I just put a giant shark over it. That’s pretty bad, dude – but he was like my idol. He still is, but that’s so dumb. I could’ve just told people he said that to me.”
Davidson recently starred alongside yet another legendary comedic actor, Eddie Murphy, in Amazon heist comedy “The Pickup.” Davidson told Extra that the film came at the ideal time. “I felt like my dad was looking out for me,” Davidson said about his late father who died in the 9/11 attacks. “I was in a rough patch and I was like, ‘Alright. Here we go. It’s not over.’ It was a godsend. I was thrilled.”