Pete Davidson Has A Good Reason For Burning Off Some (But Not All) Of His Tattoos

Pete Davidson has a lot of tattoos. Or he did, anyway. Back in late December, a Teen Vogue article estimated he had over 100 of them, all over his body. That same article reported that he was looking to cover up or burn off at least a good chunk of them. (He’s even recently made fun of them on SNL.) Cut to early May, and that’s what he’s been doing. On a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers (the tattoo business begins around the 9:45 mark), Davidson discussed exactly why he’s getting rid of so many — though not all — of his plethora of tats: Because it takes too long to cover them up when you’re doing movies or shows.

“It takes, like, three hours. You have to get there three hours earlier to cover all your tattoos,” Davidson explained, because for some reason people in movies, they don’t have them that much.” (The exception, of course, is The King of Staten Island, in which he’s playing sort-of-not-really himself.)

And so, to get more movie roles playing characters who aren’t covered head-to-toe in dozens and dozens of tattoos, he’s getting them burned off. “But burning them off is worse than getting them,” he said. Why Because you have to explain each one to highly-trained medical doctors. When that tattoos are being removed, the doctor goes over each one, to see if they should be removed or not. And Davidson has some questionable inks.

“Before he goes to laser each tattoo, you have to hear him announce what tattoo it is, to make sure you want to keep it or not,” he said. “I’ll be sitting there, getting quite high off the Pro-Nox, which I actually quite enjoy. And all of a sudden I’ll hear, “Are we keeping the Stewie Griffin smoking a blunt’ And then I’ll have to be like, ‘No, Dr. G.’”

But Davidson has some advice for people who get dicey tattoos that may have to be removed by doctors later: “Just make sure you really, really want them, and aren’t on mushrooms.”

You can watch Davidson’s full interview above.