The comedian’s recent appearance at CinemaCon revealed his arms and hands are no longer covered in ink.

Pete Davidson is nearly tattoo-free, 6 years and $200,000 later

The comedian's recent appearance at CinemaCon revealed his arms and hands are no longer covered in ink.

By Kathleen Perricone

April 17, 2026 5:28 p.m. ET

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Pete Davidson at CinemaCon on April 15. Credit:

Stewart Cook/Amazon MGM Studios via Getty

- A new photo reveals Pete Davidson is nearly tattoo-free, six years after he began the removal process.

- The comedian has more than 200 pieces inked on his body, including portraits of Jaws, SpongeBob, and Hillary Clinton.

- In December, Davidson estimated he had already spent $200,000 and had another 70 percent more to go.

If every tattoo tells a story, Pete Davidson is rewriting history by removing the more than 200 pieces inked into his skin.

Since 2020, the actor has been on the painstaking and painful journey – and now, six years and $200,000 later, he's finally making some serious progress.

This week at CinemaCon, Davidson promoted his new film *How to Rob a Bank* dressed in a t-shirt that revealed the tattoos on his arms, hands, and neck are virtually gone.

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Last November, he said his goal was "to be able to wear a T-shirt and not see anything there by the end of this year."

And sure enough, in a Dec. 21 photo snapped by Davidson's girlfriend Elsie Hewitt of the comedian and his newborn baby girl, the ink on his lower arms had all but faded.

But that was only the beginning. Davidson estimated at the time "there's like 65, 70 percent of the tattoos left."

The next section to go under the laser will be his torso and back, as he continues the process already started on his chest.

Among the disappearing ink is a massive portrait of Jaws over his heart that was intended to cover-up his most "humiliating" tattoo: "Jokes come and go, but swag is forever," advice a young Davidson got from Dave Chappelle early in his comedy career.

Pete Davidson heavily-tattooed in 2019.

Bobby Bank/GC Images

At this rate, "it's gonna take me another 10 years," he joked to *Variety* in 2025.

The timeline has never been exactly fixed. In 2021, when Davidson first announced his plan to remove his tattoos, the 27-year-old had been advised "by the time I'm 30, they should all be gone."

Now 32, he's acknowledged the process is tedious due to the six-week healing time in between each removal session. So if each piece requires at least 10 jolts of a laser to break down the pigment "that's 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo to remove."

"So, it's pretty horrible," Davidson told *Variety* about the process. "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. And it's pretty tough. It sucks, I'm not gonna lie."

Pete Davidson in February 2025.

Cindy Ord/Getty

Of the 200-plus tattoos on his body, there's at least one he intends to keep: the ink portrait of Hillary Clinton on his right leg.

"Hillary's staying, I love Hillary," he said on *The Breakfast Club* radio show last year. "I got Hillary after she lost" the 2016 presidential election. "I know her personally and she's a lovely lady… I just wanted to, like, cheer her up a little bit."

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But in all seriousness, removing his tattoos is a necessary step in his sobriety.

"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 confessed to *Variety*. "When I look in the mirror, I don't want the reminder of 'Oh yeah, you were a f---ing drug addict. Like, that's why you have SpongeBob smoking a joint on your back.'"

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