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Pete Davidson on Joey Ramone biopic: 'I'm still in shock that they're letting me do this'

Pete Davidson recently revealed the long tattoo removal process ahead of him, and I Slept With Joey Ramone is one of the reasons why he decided to say goodbye to his collection of 100-plus.

The 27-year-old Saturday Night Live staple is set to portray Ramone in the forthcoming Netflix biopic—his casting was announced in April—and opened up to Billboard about the role in an interview published Tuesday (July 27).

"I'm still in shock that they're letting me do this," Davidson told writer Gil Kaufman, later adding: "I'm about to start music lessons and voice lessons and all this other s—t, and it's honestly a dream come true that they're giving Pete a shot. Hopefully I do it justice and I hope I don't let anybody down."

Davidson previously explained on Late Night with Seth Meyers in early May that he "honestly never thought" he would be asked to act outside of SNL. His transition into the movie business led to wanting to ditch his tattoos.

"You have to get there three hours earlier to cover all your tattoos 'cause for some reason people in movies, they don't have them that much," he said then. "So now I'm burning them off, but burning them off is worse than getting them."

Davidson has been able to get away with having his skin almost completely covered to this point, especially considering one of his two top-billing roles was last summer's The King of Staten Island—a comedic drama based loosely on his own troubled adolescence and directed by Judd Apatow.

For I Slept With Joey Ramone, Davidson is co-writing the script with Jason Orley. The comedian and burgeoning actor starred in the leading role for Big Time Adolescence (2019), directed and written by Orley. The biopic is based on a memoir by the same name written by Mickey Leigh, Ramone's younger brother. Ramone died April 15, 2001, from lymphoma at 49 years old.

"Davidson says he's definitely 'really f—ing nervous' about the gig—but also just as excited," Kaufman relayed. 'I'm definitely taking it very serious and I'm doing my research,' he explains, describing his current regimen of singing, drum and guitar lessons. 'Because Joey did a bit of everything and we're following his life, so you're going to see a bit of that.' In addition to the music lessons, Davidson says he's been hanging out with Leigh, and talking to everybody he can find from the old days—as well as 'the whole Queens crew' from the neighborhood where Joey and Mickey grew up and where the Ramones were formed in 1974."

While Davidson's SNL future is still "up in the air," he can next be seen in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad beginning Aug. 6.

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