He’s back with a hilarious new comedy special, which includes the revelation that he attended Aretha Franklin’s funeral in 2018 while high on ketamine.
But Pete Davidson’s newest Netflix stand-up special, Turbo Fonzarelli, is surprisingly lacking in material inspired by his late father, Scott Matthew Davidson.
Although the 30-year-old former Saturday Night Live star includes some jokes poking fun at his mother Amy for not getting back on the dating scene for decades after his father’s death, he keeps the details about his father’s tragic death fairly light in the new effort.
However, the comic has previously spoken in depth about the circumstances of his father’s death, which was fictionalized in the semi-autobiographical 2020 dramedy The King Of Staten Island, which he starred in and co-wrote with director Judd Apatow.
More than 20 years after his dad Scott’s death, DailyMail.com takes a look back at the tragic circumstances and delves into how Pete first discovered the loss.
Pete Davidson is back with a new Netflix stand-up special, Turbo Fonzarelli, which features fewer references to his late father Scott Davidson than past stand-up efforts; seen in 2016 in Wantagh, New York
DailyMail.com looks back at Pete’s dad Scott, a New York City firefighter who died while responding to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
Pete’s father worked as a firefighter in New York City when the future film and television star was just a child, and he was one of the many emergency workers who rushed to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when two hijacked passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers.
Scott had been a firefighter going back to 1994, according to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
Scott was responding to the less well-known Marriott World Trade Center, a 22-story hotel nestled between the two enormous towers that was also known as World Trade Center 3.
Although the building was directly hit by either jet strike, it was completely destroyed during the collapse of the two taller towers.
Pete’s father, who was working at Ladder Company 118 in Brooklyn Heights, responded to the attack on the Twin Towers after a second hijacked jet had crashed into the towers.
He was helping in the smaller hotel when the towers collapsed.
In April of 2023, Pete appeared on Jon Bernthal’s podcast Real Ones and recounted the initial confusion following his father’s death on 9/11.
‘My dad told me he was going to pick me up from school on 9/11. I got picked up by my mom,’ he recalled. ‘She didn’t tell me what was going on for like three days.’
‘She kept telling me, “Dad’s at work,” “He’s coming home,” whatever,’ he continued. ‘I had no idea.’
Although Pete’s mother Amy may have feared the worst, in the confusion of the attacks they may not have known for certain that his father has dead.
Survivors were pulled out for over a day after the building collapses, with the final person found alive in the rubble being rescued 27 hours after they were buried alive.
In April 2023, Pete told Jon Bernthal on his podcast Real Ones that his dad had told him he would pick him up from school on 9/11, only for his mom to pick up when they lost communication with his dad
Scott had been responding to the Marriott World Trade Center, a 22-story hotel wedged between the two towers that was destroyed when they collapsed
‘She didn’t tell me what was going on for like three days,’ Pete said. ‘She kept telling me, “Dad’s at work,” “He’s coming home,” whatever. I had no idea’; still from Turbo Fonzarelli
In an effort to keep her son from making his own conclusions about his father’s absence, Amy ‘grounded’ him and forbade him from watching television.
But the attempted punishment didn’t stick, and Pete learned his father’s fate from an act of rebellion.
‘Then one night, I turned on the TV and I just saw my dad on the TV,’ he recalled. ‘I was like, “Oh, OK.” And they were like, these are all the firemen that are, like, dead.’
‘It was weird because we didn’t know he was dead for, like, three weeks,’ Pete continued.
‘They were finding people, you know? They were pulling people out of s***, and there was just some sort of hope,’ he continued, even though no one was discovered alive in the rubble after the second day. ‘Like, it was just up and down and nobody knew how to deal with it.’
He also revealed that he was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In the same conversation, Pete admitted that the unresolved fears about his father’s safety for weeks left him feeling as if he had been abandoned for years to come.
‘You know, Dad says he’s coming to pick you up and he doesn’t,’ he said. ‘For life, I’m like, I don’t believe anyone, and I’m trying to learn how to believe people — and Hollywood isn’t exactly the greatest place to learn that skill.’
However, he admitted that he eventually developed a better understanding of what his mother must have been going through.
Pete’s mom Amy ‘grounded’ him to keep him from watching TV, and he claimed they didn’t know what happened to Scott for ‘three weeks.’ But when he dared to turn the TV on, he saw his father among a list of firefighters killed in the Twin Towers
Pete was later diagnosed with PTSD. In the same conversation with Bernthal he pushed back against critics who claim he jokes about his father’s death too often; seen in 2022
Pete also pushed back against complaints that he often references his father’s death in his stand-up routines.
‘It’s like, I made two jokes about my dad in a span of like 15 years. To act like I’m like this, “feel bad for me,” it’s such bulls*** and it makes me feel so small and s****y,” he said of his detractors, adding, ‘I’m trying to share little jokes here and there about him because I like to keep that memory alive. My dad was a great dude. Like, why is that a problem? I get defensive, that’s my family.’
In October of last year, a friend of the comedian told Page Six that he had been feeling down after Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel on October 7 had reminded him of his father’s death on 9/11.
That month he also returned to host SNL.
