Back in December during a bit on the "Weekend Update" segment of "Saturday Night Live," cast member Pete Davidson said he was going on vacation — a vacation that sounded an awful lot like rehab. "The kind of vacation where like, insurance pays for some of it, and they take your phone and shoelaces," he said.
It now appears that he wasn't joking. Page Six reports that Pete made some comments during a midnight stand-up comedy show at Carolines on Broadway in New York City on Feb. 16 that seem to confirm he indeed recently sought help at a facility, which reportedly happened around the time he was breaking up with model Kaia Gerber after about three months of dating.
According to Page Six, Pete told the audience that he'd worked on some of the jokes in his set while he was in treatment at Arizona's Sierra Tucson rehab — a facility that treats not only drug and alcohol addiction but mental health issues. Pete — who's been open about his past drug use as well as his borderline personality disorder diagnosis — told the audience that he went by the name "Howard" while he was a patient and spent time hanging out at a designated smoking spot called the "butt hut."
"The audience seemed really supportive of him," a source told Page Six, which reports that Pete opened up about having suicidal thoughts, joking that he'd signed a pledge promising he wouldn't kill himself until the New York Knicks won the NBA championship. His punchline? He has "at least five more years to go" before the struggling basketball team could even possibly get there.
Pete also cracked some jokes about fellow comedian Louis C.K. Pete told the audience at Carolines that during his first season at "SNL," Louis tried to get him fired after he caught Pete smoking marijuana at work, warning him, "You'll smoke away your career." (A few years later in late 2017, Louis torpedoed his career with his own behavior: He admitted he was guilty of appalling sexual misconduct in the wake of multiple women's claims against him.)
Pete obviously wasn't fired but he was, he said, ordered into "SNL" exec Lorne Michaels' office where, he joked, "Lorne's eyes were saying, 'People used to do coke here,' " Page Six reported. Pete said he was crushed over what happened — at least until the "glorious day" that Louis C.K.'s sexual-misconduct scandal made headlines and the comedy star had to take a big step back from his career.
Some of the jokes Pete told at this stand-up gig, Page Six added, will be in his upcoming Netflix special.