Pete Davidson’s Tattoo Removal: 6 Years, $200K, 200 Tattoos

Pete Davidson showed up to CinemaCon in Las Vegas this April with a look nobody associates with him: bare arms.

Six years ago, the SNL alum was covered in roughly 200 tattoos. Now most of them are gone, along with $200,000, and he says he is nowhere near finished paying.

The numbers

“It’s a pretty uncomfortable amount of money to disclose,” he told Variety in April 2025. “I’ve already spent like $200K and I’m like 30 percent done. So, like, it’s gonna suck.”

He started in 2020. By his own estimate, the clean slate arrives around his 40th birthday.

“I have to plan it in between work because it’s a six-week healing process each time you get one removed,” he said. “Each tattoo is 10 to 12 sessions. That’s 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo to remove.”

He told People he did his hands and neck first: “the order of what is most visible.”

(Anyone wondering what those numbers look like for a normal amount of ink: how many sessions removal takes has them.)

“It’s like putting your arm on a grill and burning off a layer.”

— Pete Davidson, to Variety

Why he is doing it

So why go through it?

“I used to be a drug addict and I was a sad person, and I felt ugly and that I needed to be covered up,” he said. “When I look at them, I remember a sad person that was very unsure. So I’m just removing them and starting fresh.”

What stays

Not everything goes. He is keeping a few sentimental pieces, including one for his mother, and, per a January 2025 Tonight Show appearance, the Hillary Clinton portrait may survive the purge.

He also films his sessions for the younger people in his family: “If you don’t like it, this is what you have to do.”

What it feels like

His review of the procedure: “It’s like putting your arm on a grill and burning off a layer, and then you gotta do maintenance and let it heal properly… It sucks, I’m not gonna lie.”

For the big areas, he gets put under. For the small ones, he talks to the nurse. And then he waits six weeks and does it again — for the next decade or so. (How long removal takes explains why it takes so long.)

In the end

Davidson’s tattoo removal story may be more expensive than most, but his reason probably matches up with yours: the tattoos stopped matching the person. The psychology of tattoo regret is a great primer on that.

A note on this guide

Tattoo Takeoff is an independent, research-based resource. It is not a clinic and does not perform removal, and nothing here is medical advice. Every account in this article traces to the named interview or appearance it came from.

Last reviewed: September 12, 2026. Updated as we learn more.

Featured Image: Pete Davidson, by LaVar James, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.