Pete Davidson recently opened up about how his first major sketch on Saturday Night Live, which aired during the 40th season back in 2014, completely fell flat, despite being alongside one of his biggest comedy idols, Jim Carrey.
Speaking during the July 28 episode of Hot Ones, Davidson shared that he had high hopes for the sketch, which was called Zombie Apocalypse High School.
The concept featured him as the zombie son of Carrey’s character, a non-zombie trying to survive the apocalypse.
But the sketch didn’t go as planned. “The sketch bombed to high heavens. And it’s a long one, like it’s six minutes,” Davidson recalled. “I’m eating d—.”
The only moment that got a reaction from the live audience, he explained, came when Carrey hit him with a bat during a scene where the zombie son lunged at him.
“That got a pop,” Davidson said. Knowing how to work a crowd, Carrey decided to lean into the physical humour and kept hitting Davidson with the bat, a foam prop, for the rest of the sketch.
“Jim is a comic so he knows if that works… so the rest of the sketch he just keeps wailing on me with this NERF bat, and then it started to hurt.”
Davidson admitted that he finally broke character, just a little, while still pretending to be a zombie.
“At one point, as a zombie, I went ‘Argh, no more.’” Despite the laughter that eventually came from the slapstick move, Davidson still doesn’t look back on the moment fondly.
“It’s online if you want to watch a 20-year-old crumble with his idol,” he said.
The sketch aired during an episode hosted by Carrey, with Iggy Azalea as the musical guest.
