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Judd Apatow is the artist and Pete Davidson is the clay. The comedic director known for launching actors’ careers is doing just that for the “Saturday Night Live” star in the upcoming flick “The King of Staten Island,” available on-demand June 12. A new trailer for the movie premiered Friday. It was Amy Schumer who …
Judd Apatow is the artist and Pete Davidson is the clay.
The comedic director known for launching actors’ careers is doing just that for the “Saturday Night Live” star in the upcoming flick “The King of Staten Island,” available on-demand June 12. A new trailer for the movie premiered Friday.
It was Amy Schumer who told the director to keep his eye on Davidson during her first role as a leading lady in Apatow’s 2015 comedy “Trainwreck.”
“I asked her if there was anyone I should know about and she said, ‘There’s this guy Pete Davidson who’s 20 years old and ridiculously funny,’ ” he told Entertainment Weekly. Apatow cast the young comic for a cameo in the movie, instantly impressing “SNL” cast member Bill Hader, who played Schumer’s love interest in the film.
“Then he was so funny that Bill Hader said to him the next day, ‘I’m going to tell Lorne Michaels he should put you on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and then Pete auditioned for Lorne,” he recalled.
The film follows Davidson’s character, Scott, a Staten Island townie who spends most of his time smoking weed at his mom’s house. (Sound familiar?) But the seemingly carefree character harbors grief for his late father, a firefighter who died in the line of duty when Scott was a child. Everything comes to a head when his mom (Marisa Tomei) begins dating Ray (Bill Burr), also a firefighter.
The story hits home for Davidson, whose real father, a member of the FDNY, died on 9/11.
Apatow, 52, made Steve Carell a household name in 2005 with “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” James Franco and Seth Rogen were nobodies back in 1999 before he cast them in the gone-too-soon series “Freaks and Geeks.” And Lena Dunham was just another trust-fund-supported art student before producer Apatow saw millennial-defining series “Girls” to fruition.
The hitmaker with an eye for fledging talent told the magazine, “It’s just exciting for me to be on the ground floor.”
Apatow calls the new film “an imagining of what Pete’s life might have been like if he never found comedy.”
“Comedy really was his savior,” he said of Davidson, 26, who has made headlines in the past for his eyebrow-raising relationships with Ariana Grande and Kate Beckinsale, as well as his periodic check-ins to rehab.
Apatow hopes that making the movie — which so closely parallels Davidson’s own life it was a “cathartic” experience for the actor — will encourage him to “let go of a lot of the obstacles that have complicated his life.”
It’s the “terror of humiliating myself and them” that inspires moviemaker Apatow, once a stand-up comic himself, to support the comics who are willing to put themselves out there. And Davidson rose to the challenge, according to Apatow.
“He is a very strong actor and is very willing to be vulnerable in the scenes,” he said.
Despite the lack of fanfare for a video release — the film was supposed to get a big-screen premiere. But that was sidelined due to the coronavirus pandemic — Apatow doesn’t regret the timing. He believes the movie is about “what is happening right now.”
“This was [Davidson’s] way of talking about heroes and how important they are — and we see that every day now,” he said. “Nurses, doctors, people working in grocery stores, policemen, first responders, firemen, delivery people, anybody putting themselves at risk for others and helping keep the world running. And this movie is partially about these people who we all look up to.”
