Pete Davidson at CinemaCon on April 15Credit: Stewart Cook/Amazon MGM Studios through Getty
Key Points
A brand new picture reveals Pete Davidson is nearly tattoo-free, six years after he started the removing course of.
The comic has greater than 200 items inked on his physique, together with portraits of Jaws, SpongeBob, and Hillary Clinton.
In December, Davidson estimated he had already spent $200,000 and had one other 70 p.c extra to go.
If each tattoo tells a narrative, Pete Davidson is rewriting historical past by eradicating the greater than 200 items inked into his pores and skin.
Since 2020, the actor has been on the painstaking and painful journey – and now, six years and $200,000 later, he is lastly making some critical progress.
This week at CinemaCon, Davidson promoted his new movie How to Rob a Bank wearing a t-shirt that exposed the tattoos on his arms, arms, and neck are just about gone.
Last November, he mentioned his goal was “to be able to wear a T-shirt and not see anything there by the end of this year.”
And certain sufficient, in a Dec. 21 photo snapped by Davidson’s girlfriend Elsie Hewitt of the comic and his new child child lady, the ink on his decrease arms had all however light.
But that was solely the start. Davidson estimated on the time “there’s like 65, 70 percent of the tattoos left.”
The subsequent part to go beneath the laser will likely be his torso and again, as he continues the method already began on his chest.
Among the disappearing ink is a large portrait of Jaws over his coronary heart that was supposed to cover-up his most “humiliating” tattoo: “Jokes come and go, but swag is forever,” recommendation a younger Davidson obtained from Dave Chappelle early in his comedy profession.
Pete Davidson heavily-tattooed in 2019Credit: Bobby Bank/GC Images
At this charge, “it’s gonna take me another 10 years,” he joked to Variety in 2025.
The timeline has by no means been precisely fastened. In 2021, when Davidson first announced his plan to take away his tattoos, the 27-year-old had been suggested “by the time I’m 30, they should all be gone.”
Now 32, he is acknowledged the method is tedious as a result of six-week therapeutic time in between every removing session. So if each bit requires at the least 10 jolts of a laser to interrupt down the pigment “that’s 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo to remove.”
“So, it’s pretty horrible,” Davidson instructed Variety concerning the course of. “It’s like putting your arm on a grill and burning off a layer, and then you gotta do maintenance and let it heal properly. And it’s pretty tough. It sucks, I’m not gonna lie.”
Pete Davidson in February 2025Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty
Of the 200-plus tattoos on his physique, there’s at the least one he intends to maintain: the ink portrait of Hillary Clinton on his right leg.
“Hillary’s staying, I like Hillary,” he mentioned on The Breakfast Club radio present final yr. “I got Hillary after she lost” the 2016 presidential election. “I know her personally and she’s a lovely lady… I just wanted to, like, cheer her up a little bit.”
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But in all seriousness, eradicating his tattoos is a essential step in his sobriety.
“I used to be a drug addict and I was a sad person, and I felt ugly and that I needed to be covered up,” he confessed to Variety. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t want the reminder of ‘Oh yeah, you were a f—ing drug addict. Like, that’s why you have SpongeBob smoking a joint on your back.'”
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