Pete Davidson has opened up about his ongoing experience with PTSD, which the former “Saturday Night Live” actor said stemmed from learning of his father’s death.
“My dad told me he was going to pick me up from school on 9/11,” Davidson said during an appearance on actor Jon Bernthal’s “Real Ones” podcast, which launched Thursday. “I was taken by my mum – she didn’t tell me what was going on for three days.”
Davidson was just 7 years old when his firefighter father, Scott, was killed in action at Ground Zero while responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“He kept telling me dad was at work, coming home, whatever — I had no idea,” the “King of Staten Island” actor, now 29, said. He said at one point his mother told him, “‘You’re grounded, you’re not allowed to watch TV.’ And I said, “What? I did nothing.”
“And then one night I turned on the TV and I saw my dad on TV,” she said. “And they say, ‘These are all the dead firefighters,’ and everything. And then I had to talk to my mother.”
Davidson said her mother was only 30 at the time and “nobody knew” how to deal with the news.
“It was weird because we wouldn’t know he was dead for about three weeks,” she said.
Whether or not that was the right way to tell him about his father’s death still baffled him, Davidson said. In addition to PTSD, he has borderline personality disorder. Davidson said one of her symptoms is fear of abandonment, which is common for people with borderline personality disorder, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“So, you know, dad says he’s going to take you — he doesn’t — for life, I’m like, ‘I don’t believe anybody,'” she said. “And I’m trying to learn to believe people.”
Listen to the full interview below:
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Davidson first opened up about his diagnosis of borderline personality disorder in 2017, as he talked about entering rehab to address his mental health and then seeking therapy.
“It’s working, slowly but surely,” the comedian said during an appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. “I had many problems. This whole year has been a nightmare. This has been the worst year of my life being diagnosed and trying to figure out how to learn about it and live with it.
