Pete Davidson says this year’s 9/11 anniversary feels different because the calendar has caught up with him. He is now the age his father was when he died, and he is also spending the day as a new parent, which has turned the 25th anniversary into something he calls extra tough and extra beautiful.
That is why the search for his name is landing now. Davidson, who lost Scott Davidson in the Sept. 11 attacks when he was 7, said he had always pictured his father as older than 33. “I thought, ‘Oh, he was an old guy. He’s 33,’” he said. “But now I’m there, and I have a kid, and that would be like my kid not having her dad.”
The daughter in question is Scottie, whom Davidson and Elsie Hewitt welcomed in December. He said it was important to him that Hewitt wanted to use the name, and he tied it directly to his father’s own name and nickname. “My dad’s name was Scott, but his nickname was Scotty,” he said, adding that when the baby arrived, “we both looked at her and were like, ‘She looks like a Scottie.’”
The family name has already taken on a presence in daily life. Davidson said that when Scottie was first bathed in the sink, there was a picture of Scott above it, and the baby would stare at it. He said she still turns her head when he walks around, and he likes to think his father is somehow around. The comedian also said he has not yet worked out how he will explain Scott Davidson’s death to Scottie, a gap that sits at the center of this year’s anniversary for him.
That private grief is landing alongside a public remembrance plan. Davidson and Jon Stewart are set to host “NYC Still Rising After 25 Years: A 9/11 Comedy Benefit” at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 10, with proceeds going to charities that support first responders from that day and their families. Davidson said he and Stewart did the 20th anniversary at the Garden, and that many of the people who come to these events are his father’s friends and colleagues.
For Davidson, the contradiction is the point. He said the day is difficult because of what he lost, but also healing because he gets to spend it with Scottie. This year’s anniversary is not just a memorial to the past; it is the first one that forces him to explain that past to a child who now carries his father’s name.
