Pete Davidson Opens SNL With Emotional Message About Israel and 9/11

More than five months after he was originally scheduled to make his Saturday Night Live hosting debut, former cast member Pete Davidson made a triumphant return to Studio 8H on Saturday night with an emotional tribute that won’t soon be forgotten.

The legendary comedy series opted to skip its usual cold open and instead let Davidson speak to the tragic events currently unfolding in Israel. “I know what you’re thinking: Who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson,” the comedian joked. But the timing turned out to be fairly serendipitous.

“In a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was 7 years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack,” Davidson—whose father was a New York firefighter who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11—explained. “So I know something about what that’s like.”

“I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering—Israeli children and Palestinian children,” Davidson continued. “And it took me back to a really horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, you know. Especially not kids.”

The Bupkis star went on to share a story about the lengths his mom went to in order to help him heal following the death of his father, and explained how she accidentally rented him Eddie Murphy’s Delirious stand-up special. When she realized her mistake, she quickly tried to turn it off—until she realized something. “For the first time in a long time, I was laughing again.”

So Davidson was speaking from a place of authority when he declared that “sometimes, comedy is the only way forward through tragedy.”

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