Judd Apatow: Making new film was ‘cathartic’ for Pete Davidson
The story in Pete Davidson’s raw comedy-drama The King of Staten Island is fictional, but the emotional roller coaster the character experiences is as real as it gets.
“When you see the movie, it’s all made up, but on an emotional level, it’s all completely true. These are Pete’s feelings,” director Judd Apatow told the
NY Daily News last week.
Billed as a semi-autobiographical window into the 26-yearold comedian’s life, the film features Davidson in the role of fictional Staten Islander Scott Carlin as he struggles to find his way years after the death of his firefighter dad. It directly draws from Davidson’s own experiences following his FDNY father’s death Sept. 11, 2001, while responding to the terror attacks in Lower Manhattan.
“We were working from the premise of: What would Pete be like if he didn’t have comedy?” Apatow told the News. “What if he didn’t know what to do? So that was the big difference. What’s similar is the different stages of Pete’s grief and how he’s trying to deal with it.”
In the movie, which debuts Friday on various video-on-demand platforms, Davidson’s character is unmotivated and keeps his pain bottled up. He finds his life flipped upside down when his mother, played by Marisa Tomei, starts dating another fireman and urges her horrified son to move out on his own.
The film was years in the making for Davidson, who met Apatow on the set of the director’s comedy Trainwreck after star Amy Schumer suggested him for a cameo. Davidson made such a strong impression that another actor in that movie, Bill Hader, recommended him to Lorne Michaels for Saturday Night Live.
Davidson joined SNL in 2014. For several years, he and Apatow discussed ideas for doing a movie together, and ultimately came up with The King of Staten Island, which they co-wrote with Dave Sirus.
“Pete is all about being completely honest and transparent,” said Apatow, 52. “He doesn’t hold anything back. He’s dealt with tragedy in his life by talking about it, by making art and comedy about it, and even though it was all very sensitive, he was interested in exploring it. The process felt very rewarding the entire time. It gave him the chance to look at his life from a lot of different angles and I think he found that very cathartic.”
Apatow also believes it was therapeutic for Davidson to spend time with his father’s friends at the firehouse during production for The King of Staten Island.
The movie is the latest high-profile comedy project for Apatow, who directed Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin and produced Superbad and Anchorman. His daughter, Maude, also stars in The King of Staten Island as Scott’s sister.
Much of the movie was filmed on Staten Island, where Davidson was born and raised and began his stand-up comedy career at 16. He’s been on since he was 20.
“Pete talked a lot about how when he was a kid, they wouldn’t leave very often. Manhattan was right there, but for some reason, he and all of his friends wouldn’t venture out to the city, to other boroughs, and it was a little bit of a bubble for them,” said Apatow, who was born in Flushing, Queens, and raised in Syosset on Long Island.
“Because there really isn’t an attraction on Staten Island, you don’t really have a lot of visitors who aren’t your very close friends or family... so it is its own little world that, for me, as someone from Long Island, I felt like it was very familiar,” the director said. “I really enjoyed being there. Everyone was really, really kind to us, and I understand why Pete loves it.”
Davidson has earned a large following with his candid and often self-deprecating style of humor, through which he talks about mental health – as well as for his much-publicized relationships with celebrities such as Ariana Grande and Kate Beckinsale.
In February, Davidson released his first Netflix comedy special, Alive From New York.
“I think people can feel that he’s a really big-hearted person, and has gone through a lot, and they root for him,” Apatow said. “He’s also a riotously funny, charismatic person, and people like him, and they should like him. He’s a great guy.” (New York Daily News/TNS)
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