Pete Davidson showed up at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last Wednesday with nearly tattoo-free arms, a sharp break from the sleeves of ink that once covered both of them. The sight came after months of comments from Davidson about the long, costly process of removing the roughly 200 tattoos he had built up over the years.
Davidson said in January 2025 that he was in the middle of burning them off and that they were almost gone. He later told Variety he had already spent almost $200,000 on the work, was only 30 percent done and expected the process to take another 10 years. He said he started in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the decision was tied to a healthier phase of his life, not a rejection of tattoos themselves. “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 said. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tattoos, but mine, when I look at them, I remember a sad person that was very unsure,” he said. “I’m just removing them and starting fresh, because that’s what I think works best for me and for my brain.”
The timing gives the appearance of a clean break, but the change is really the visible result of a project that has been underway for years. Davidson once had sleeves on both arms totaling around 200 tattoos, and he has said he plans to keep only “maybe two or three,” including a portrait of Hillary Clinton. The arm update also comes just days after Davidson and Elsie Hewitt welcomed their first child together on Dec. 12, a daughter named Scottie Rose Hewitt Davidson.
That name appears to honor Davidson’s father, Scott Davidson, a New York City firefighter who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks when Pete Davidson was seven years old. For Davidson, the new chapter is not just about what is disappearing from his skin. It is about what is staying, and what he says he is finally ready to leave behind.
