Pete Davidson Refused a Stunt Double Who Didn’t Match Him — Two Concussions in Three Weeks Followed

Posted: September 29, 2026

Pete Davidson told Jimmy Kimmel Live on September 28 that he worked through two concussions in three weeks on an indie feature because he would not use the stunt double the production had hired for him. His description of why is a matching problem, not a courage problem: “My stunt double, he was amazing, but he was like 6’6”, huge, and it was very obvious.” The line that follows is the one that belongs on a budget conversation rather than a talk show — “Indie movie stunt doubles and big movie stunt doubles do not look the same.”

Matching is a stunt-department function, and it is the first thing that gets squeezed when the money is thin. On a picture with a real stunt budget, a coordinator casts to the principal’s height, build, hairline and gait, then dresses and shoots to hide the remaining difference — wigs and hairpieces, shooting the double from behind or in silhouette, staging the beat in a wider lens or lower light, cutting on the impact. On a picture without that money you get whoever is available and qualified in the territory, and an eight-inch height gap is not something wardrobe and coverage can absorb. Davidson’s read of his own footage — “it was very obvious” — is the failure mode: the double was capable, but the cast was wrong for the frame.

What the story documents is the second failure that follows the first. When a principal looks at an unconvincing match and elects to take the work himself — “Well, I’m an idiot, and I tried to do my own stunts” — the department loses the person who was hired to absorb the risk, and the risk does not go anywhere. Two head injuries inside three weeks is a rate that would stop work on a show with a coordinator empowered to stop it, and a second concussion arriving before the first has cleared is the specific scenario head-injury protocols exist to prevent. Davidson describes failing a memory recall in a concussion evaluation — the doctor gave him “mop, mirror, blanket, picnic,” he could not repeat it back, and the doctor’s conclusion was “yeah, you have some brain damage.” He has been told to stay in sunglasses and out of bright light into mid-November. He declined to name the production.

Source: The Daily Beast — ‘SNL’ Star Reveals Severe Injuries After Doing Own Stunts · E! Online — Pete Davidson Suffered 2 Concussions in 3 Weeks While Doing Own Stunts