Pete Davidson Strongly Endorses AXE, ‘The Sopranos,’ and His Staten Island Ferry
Welcome back to Strongly Endorses, our occasional feature on the everyday things that celebrities are really into.
If you see a white 2003 Cadillac Escalade ESV driving down Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island, there’s a good chance Pete Davidson is behind the wheel. The original owner of his car, however, was Tony Soprano. Yes, that Tony Soprano. Davidson, you see, has an affinity for buying things that make him feel nostalgic. “I think that’s what I’m trying to fill my life with more,” he says. “As we get older and when we’re working, what we’re working towards is just to bring back our childhood and things that make us happy.”
The 31-year-old actor and comedian, who came up on Saturday Night Live, has been busy since he left the sketch show in 2022. When he’s not removing all 200 of his tattoos (which he predicts won’t be done for the next five years), he’s renovating a defunct Staten Island ferry for fun. He’s been careful about doing brand endorsements and commercials—”the slightest wrong move affects everything,” he says—but a new partnership with AXE was a “no brainer” for him. The nostalgia factor helped.
Courtesy of AXE
“I’ve been using this since I’ve been fucking 10 years old,” he says about AXE’s Phoenix, the body spray that’s been ubiquitous in high school hallways for the past quarter of a century. As part of this campaign, Davidson will take over the AXE Instagram on May 1 to offer fans advice as part of an AXE Me Anything segment, while a commercial spot starring the comedian titled “Short Kings” will drop on May 12. (This coincides with AXE’s release of two new scents, Cherry Spritz and Watermelon Freeze.)
Along with his affinity for AXE, GQ chatted with Davidson about his obsession with two specific categories of vintage clothing, his first (incorrect) experience with Zyn, and why you gotta give him some time before you can hop on the Pete Davidson Staten Island Ferry.
AXE Body Spray
It brings back this nostalgic childhood—memories of playing basketball and having it in your backpack, being in school and not wanting to smell like shit, having a crush on a girl. I had so many bottles of Phoenix, the blue body spray. I had one in my mom’s car, one in my locker, one in my backpack, and basketball practice—anywhere I could store one. Of course I kept one in the SNL dressing room because, you know, you live there and you work there. It’s kind of like school where it’s like nine months of very intense work, and then you’re off for the summer. So my whole life was in my office. I had tons of AXE in there and spare clothes. And what’s funny is the second I left, they renovated the whole thing. And when I was there, it was the same since 1975, so, you know, we needed to have lots of spray in there to make it fresh.
The Sopranos
If you’ve watched it, watch it again. If you haven’t watched it, what are you doing? There’s actually nothing better, and there never will be anything remotely as close to how perfect that show is. I’ve seen it over 25 times from front to back. I watch it twice a year, usually like February or March, and then I put on a couple episodes around Christmas time, because it’s kind of Christmassy to me. I don’t know why, probably [because it’s] family-oriented, and I just don’t think there will ever be as powerful of a performance as [James] Gandolfini as Tony. And obviously, you know, I love Edie [Editor’s note: Edie Falco played Davidson’s mom in his 2023 semi-autobiographical sitcom Bupkis].
I’m obsessed and could say every word from every episode. Sometimes when I watch it with my friends, they’re just like, “You’re impossible to watch this with, because you’re just doing what they’re gonna say five seconds before it happens and it’s really frustrating.” I love the show so much. I have a pinball machine, and I have Tony’s actual Escalade that I got at auction, the one he drove in seasons four, five, and six.
