Pete Davidson Responds to “Thank U, Next” in NYE Comedy Set

Pete Davidson is back on the standup circuit. In his first set since he shared that he doesn’t “want to be on this earth anymore” on Instagram, prompting his ex fiancé Ariana Grande to defend him against bullying, Davidson continued to draw inspiration from his recent breakup. For starters, he addressed Grande’s “Thank U, Next.”

At a comedy show in Boston, he told the crowd, “Here’s the thing about the breakup song. Usually breakup songs you know who it’s about but you don’t really know …That G named all of us,” he said, as E! News notes. “Bam. She named all of us. And then, tells us, yeah, he has a big dick.”

On a less comical note — if that is even comical at all — Davidson also talked about how the song has been haunting him and his mother. His mother, who is a school nurse, was serenaded the song by one of the students, as Davidson explained. “She was walking in the hallway and some little f–king kid started singing ‘Thank U Next’ to her. Me, I get it, but my mom?,” he said. Apparently, the student later had to sing the song once again — this time to school administrators in the dean’s office. Still, Davidson said that his breakup has “showed me how ugly people can get, but also how cool.”

He also joked about his tattoos — which he has joked about before after he and Grande broke up and he was left with body art in tribute to his ex. Only the butt of this joke wasn’t Grande; it was fellow comedian Louis C.K., who, after being accused of sexual misconduct, recently returned to the stage where he made fun of Parkland high school shooting survivors and gender pronouns. “I got a Harry Potter tattoo. Then the next day Alan Rickman, the guy who played Snape, died. And I was like, ‘Oh, what a weird coincidence,’” Davidson said. “Then I got a Willy Wonka tattoo. Next day – Gene Wilder dies. Now I’m like, ‘All right, that’s not a coincidence, that’s weird.’ So, I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of Louis C.K. What do you guys think? That joke used to be about Aziz Ansari, but Aziz has been nice to me recently.”