Pete Davidson has had one fascinating career. The 28-year-old comedian has been working for almost 10 years and has made quite a name for himself in front and behind the camera. A featured player on Saturday Night Live for eight years, Davidson quickly broke out and became an in-demand star. Combine that with his very public dating life with some of the most high-profile celebrities like Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale, and Kim Kardashian, and one can see why he has gained a reputation as a sex symbol despite his appearance being far from the traditional leading man.

To some, it might be hard to understand the appeal of Pete Davidson, but one need only look at his filmography which shows a talented performer who is offering something different from most comedians and most leading men, and offers an alternative to what it means to be a star. These are some of the roles that have defined Pete Davidson’s career and explain why he is so popular.

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Saturday Night Live

     NBC

Davidson got his big break on Saturday Night Live in 2014 and stayed on the series until 2022. Davidson, who was 20 at the time, was one of the youngest actors ever to join SNL and got the part due to a recommendation from Bill Hader who he worked with on Trainwreck. Davidson quickly made a name for himself on SNL with a variety of sketches, but one notable thing about his performances in sketches is how he usually keeps his normal energy instead of embodying a character.

He still often played characters in sketches, but Davidson’s biggest strength is how he brought a modern laid-back sensibility to many sketches which made a great comedic contrast to some of the higher-energy performances. Davidson represented a new type of comedic style of SNL and was a valuable player for his tenure on the series before leaving SNL. Like many performers, Davidson took his SNL fame and spun it off into an incredible film career.

The King of Staten Island

     Universal Pictures

Like fellow comedians Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Amy Schumer, producer Judd Apatow helped craft a movie around Pete Davidson in the form of 2020s The King of Staten Island. The movie is a fictionalized version of Davidson’s life where he is a young man who needs to get his life together when his mother starts dating a firefighter.

The movie draws heavily from Davidson’s own life, including the fact that his own father was a firefighter who died during the September 11th attacks in 2001. While the film is a comedy and features plenty of funny moments between Davidson and fellow comedian Bill Burr, it also shows a more sincere emotional side to Davidson’s performance and his life. The movie feels very open about Davidson’s own struggles with finding purpose and dealing with his father’s passing, and the movie is a heartfelt tribute to moving on with one’s life and growing up at any age. The King of Staten Island showed that Davidson could not only be funny, but he had the potential to be a strong dramatic actor.

The Suicide Squad

     Warner Bros. Pictures

Davidson has a small role in The Suicide Squad, but the actor makes the most of his time in the film and immediately pops as a screen presence. In the film, Davidson plays the DC villain Blackguard whose real name is Richard Hurtz. The double entendre of the name aside, Davidson’s version of the character is instantly identified as an arrogant villain but also one who is more talk than anything. He quickly panics when he thinks he is sitting next to a werewolf, and he betrays his team only to be double-crossed and shot in the face by the Corto Maltese army.

Davidson with such a short amount of screen time makes his character incredibly unlikable, so by the time his character dies it is both shocking and satisfying. Davidson being the first character in The Suicide Squad to die sets the tone for the entire movie, that anybody, no matter how big a star, could die.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

     A24

One of Davidson’s most recent films and one of the best horror movies of 2022 is Bodies Bodies Bodies. The dark comedy focuses on a group of people who decided to hold a hurricane party with someone eventually dying leaving everyone suspicious of whom the killer is. Davidson plays David, a wealthy, privileged, and entitled individual whose masculinity is easily threatened. In another performer’s hands, this could be an easily unlikable caricature, but Davidson’s natural screen persona gives the character an extra dimensionality. He sets the entire plot in motion, and by the end gets such a huge laugh because of his physicality and comedic sensibilities.

Davidson has shown time and time again that he pops off the screen with a laid-back, cocky, and everyday charm that makes him an extra bit of flavor to any role and will likely continue to be a strong screen presence for years to come.