For years, one of Pete Davidson’s “things” was tattoos. He even once had a tattoo artist travel around with his entourage. It got to the point where he’d have to spend spending three hours in a makeup chair to cover them up for roles. In 2020, Pete began the long process of removing more than 200 of his tattoos. The process is arduous because it takes 10 sessions to remove a tattoo and you have to let your body heal for six weeks in between each one. Pete has always joked about how long it would take for him to remove all of the ones he wanted gone. The process is also costing him at least $200,000.
In 2024, we got our first glimpse of Pete’s transformation when he was spotted with nearly-bare arms. Now, Pete’s hit another milestone in his journey. While promoting How to Rob a Bank at CinemaCon last week, Pete revealed that he’s finally finished removing his chest tattoos. The ones on his back and torso are up next.
If every tattoo tells a story, Pete Davidson is rewriting history by removing the more than 200 pieces inked into his skin. Since 2020, the actor has been on the painstaking and painful journey – and now, six years and $200,000 later, he’s finally making some serious progress.
This week at CinemaCon, Davidson promoted his new film How to Rob a Bank dressed in a t-shirt that revealed the tattoos on his arms, hands, and neck are virtually gone.
Last November, he said his goal was “to be able to wear a T-shirt and not see anything there by the end of this year.”
And sure enough, in a Dec. 21 photo snapped by Davidson’s girlfriend Elsie Hewitt of the comedian and his newborn baby girl, the ink on his lower arms had all but faded.
But that was only the beginning. Davidson estimated at the time “there’s like 65, 70 percent of the tattoos left.”
The next section to go under the laser will be his torso and back, as he continues the process already started on his chest.
Among the disappearing ink is a massive portrait of Jaws over his heart that was intended to cover-up his most “humiliating” tattoo: “Jokes come and go, but swag is forever,” advice a young Davidson got from Dave Chappelle early in his comedy career.
At this rate, “it’s gonna take me another 10 years,” he joked to Variety in 2025.
The timeline has never been exactly fixed. In 2021, when Davidson first announced his plan to remove his tattoos, the 27-year-old had been advised “by the time I’m 30, they should all be gone.”
Of the 200-plus tattoos on his body, there’s at least one he intends to keep: the ink portrait of Hillary Clinton on his right leg.
“Hillary’s staying, I love Hillary,” he said on The Breakfast Club radio show last year. “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.”
But in all seriousness, removing his tattoos is a necessary 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.’”
While it sounds like Pete still has a ways to go before he finishes his entire body, it looks like he’s made a lot of progress overall. He’s got to be at least halfway there by now. Pete looks great and I’m happy to see that he’s continuing to do so well in both his sobriety and mental health journeys. I’ve always rooted for him! He wasn’t sober when he first started getting the tattoos removed, so back then, he said that he was doing it to be taken more seriously as an actor. It sounds like he’s really put in a lot of the work to maintain his sobriety, including identifying the tattoos as mental health triggers. Good for him.
I love that he’s keeping the Hilary one. It’s so iconic! Pete’s also said in the past that he’s keeping the tattoos that he got for each of his parents as well as his Sopranos-inspired ones. I wonder if he’s added one for his daughter, Scottie Rose yet, or if he’s waiting until he’s finished the removal process.
photos via Instagram and credit Getty Images and UrbanxDivinity/Backgrid