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Former Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson, in addition to his infamous ability to pull a wide variety of celebrities who appear to be out of his league, made tattoos a part of his brand over the last decade or so. In recent years, however, Davidson has been hard at work making that head-to-toe tattooed image a part of his past.
The 31-year-old Pete Davidson has been undergoing the tattoo removal process since 2021 and told Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show that of the approximately 200 tattoos he had, he plans on keeping “two or three” of them. That’s just 1.5% of his tattoos.
As for why he inked himself so thoroughly, Davidson explained that he was a “sad boy” and that “everyone was getting tattoos,” and now he’s getting them removed, in part, to help his acting career, previously noting to Seth Meyers that “people in movies” don’t have them [tattoos] “that much.”
“I’m trying to clean slate it. I’m trying to be an adult,” Davidson explained.
When it comes to the extensive removal process, Davidson explained it as having his skin burned off which results in a pain that’s worse than the tattoos were in the first place.
“I’ve been burning them off… They burn off a layer of your skin, then it has to heal for six to eight weeks.. You can’t get in the sunlight. And then you’ve got to do it, like, 12 more times… So really think about that Game of Thrones tattoo you’re thinking of getting.”
After having just a lone role in 2024 in the film Riff Raff, 2025 will see Davidson provide voice work for the new animated film Dog Man, which hit theaters on January 31.
Davidson also has a trio of films — The Home, Wizards!, and The Pickup — in postproduction, although none of them have official release dates at this time.