There’s a reason why Pete Davidson was not featured in the documentary about Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels.
“I interviewed so many people for the film, and at a certain point, after I’d interviewed [John] Mulaney and he had said everything he had said, I just didn’t know where we were gonna put more voices,” director Morgan Neville told People in an interview published on Saturday, April 18. “It just felt like it was full, you know?”
Neville noted that Davidson, 32, was not available when they first started filming the documentary, recalling that he didn’t know “where anything’s gonna fit” with all the SNL alums participating.
“That was the hard part,” Neville said. “It was like an embarrassment of riches, that you could interview a thousand people about Lorne Michaels. So many people have stories.”
Pete Davidson got candid about why he thought some of his Saturday Night Live costars found his success “annoying” before he left the show. “You got to remember [that] everyone there did Second City improv, [they] worked so hard — so hard,” Davidson, 31, said during the Wednesday, August 13, episode of Power 105.1 FM’s […]
Neville also hoped to focus more on Michaels, 81, rather than celebrities like who he crossed paths with.
“I was just trying to distill his essence into a film,” he said. “A lot of those stories are not about Lorne, they’re about those people.”
“I just wanted to make sure I was staying on Lorne’s story and not other people’s stories,” he continued. “Because there are stories everywhere and it’s huge. There are thousand-page books about the show. So, it’s really just trying to get that essence of what makes him tick that I was just zeroed in on.”
Davidson has been candid through the years about his relationship with Michaels. In the 2025 documentary SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Davidson recalled calling for a meeting with Michaels after his first year on the show.
A Saturday Night Live reunion is on the way! Pete Davidson is slated to host the next episode of the variety series nearly one year after his departure. “Coming up next!!!” a post read on SNL’s Instagram account on Saturday, April 15, revealing that Davidson, 29, will lead the Saturday, May 6, episode. Rapper Lil Uzi Vert will […]
“I was like, ‘Please fire me,’” he shared in the series’ first episode. “And he was like, ‘Why?’ I was like, ‘I don’t belong here. Everybody here’s so talented, and they don’t want to be my friend.’”
Davidson went on to jokingly compare himself to acting like “a child,” adding, “I was like, ‘Nobody wants to be my friend.’ And he said, ‘You don’t figure it out until your third or fourth year. … It’s just gonna suck for three or four years.’ I was like, ‘All right,’ and he was right.”
Davidson ultimately remained on the show for eight seasons, before his exit in 2022.
“I appreciate SNL always having my back and allowing me to work on myself and grow,” he said during his final Weekend Update appearance on the season 47 finale. “Thank you to Lorne for never giving up on me or judging me even when everyone else was and for believing in me and allowing me to have a place that I could call home with memories that will last a lifetime. So, thank you guys.”
Lorne is currently in theaters.