After just one season of “Saturday Night Live,” Pete Davidson wanted out. In the new “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” docuseries, the comedian revealed that he asked series creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels to cut him loose.
“After my first year, I actually called for a meeting with Lorne. I was like, ‘Please fire me,’” Davidson said. “‘I don’t belong here. Everybody here is so talented, and they don’t want to be my friend.’ I was a child! I was like, ‘Nobody wants to be my friend!’”
As Davidson remembers it, Michaels told him, “You don’t figure it out until your third or fourth year. It’s just going to suck for like three or four years.” Davidson, who ended up staying on as a cast member for eight seasons, added, “He was right!”
Davidson joined “SNL” at age 20 in 2014 and left the cast in 2022, coming back to host in October 2023. When he departed the series, he wrote in a farewell message, “I got to share so much with this audience and literally grow up in front of your eyes. We were together through the good and the bad, the happiest and the darkest of times. I owe Lorne Michaels and everyone at ‘SNL’ my life. I’m so grateful and I wouldn’t be here without them. I appreciate you guys always having my back and sticking up for me even when that wasn’t the popular opinion. Thank you for always believing in me and sticking by my side even when it seemed comical.”
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He continued, “Thank you for teaching me life values, how to grow up and for giving me memories that will last a lifetime. ‘SNL’ is my home.”
Davidson went on to star in Judd Apatow’s “The King of Staten Island,” “Dumb Money” and his TV show “Bupkis.”
“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” which premiered Jan. 16 on Peacock, is a four-part docuseries directed by Morgan Neville that peels back the curtain on “SNL’s” audition process, writers room and more.