Pete Davidson Channels a Nude Ken Doll — and Spoofs His 'BDE' — on the Cover of PAPER Magazine
Step aside, Kim Kardashian West.
Following in the footsteps of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians reality star — who famously bared her backside and recreated Jean-Paul Goude’s “Champagne Incident” portrait for PAPER Magazine’s #BreaktheInternet issue in 2014 — Pete Davidson just stripped down for the sake of going viral.
Wearing nothing but a silk shirt, a neck scarf and a single white sock, the Saturday Night Live comedian, 26, is channeling a PG-13 Ken on the cover PAPER Magazine’s latest #BreaktheInternet issue.
Davidson’s tattoo-covered chest is on full-display as he stares directly into the camera, striking a stiff, doll-like pose in the middle of a colorful bathroom that looks like it was pulled straight from a Barbie Malibu Dream House.
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And in what seems to be a play on Davidson’s “big d— energy,” the former Wild ‘N Out star is photo shopped to look plastic from the waist down.
13 Reasons Why actor Tommy Dorfman — who wrote, art directed and photographed the cover story — revealed that the avant-garde concept actually came from Davidson himself.
“He’d told me he slept in a car bed as a kid I saw it immediately: this Staten Island Ken Doll version of Pete stuck in a Barbie nightmare, pills everywhere,” Dorfman wrote in the article. “You’d be like depressed Ken,” I said. “Yeah! And dickless, like, with Ken-dick,” he said.
Actress and model Julia Foxx played Barbie alongside Davidson for the remainder of the shoot, in which the pair put an edgy spin on the classic dolls — think Gucci shoes, a graphic print t-shirt and a latex bodysuit, à la Instagram “It-girls.”
But despite the sexual nature of the photo shoot, Davidson got serious about his love life for the interview portion of the December cover story.
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“My love language, when I’m in a relationship, is I treat the person I’m with like a princess,” Davidson told the magazine for the #BreakTheInternet issue, which also includes interviews with James Charles, Lilly Singh and Doja Cat. “I try and go as above and beyond as possible, because that’s what you’re supposed to do? If you’re in a relationship with someone, you’re just supposed to make that person feel as special as possible.”
But Davidson admitted that his tendency to love hard doesn’t always work in his favor.
“Sometimes when you put so much on someone, it overwhelms them, and then they don’t know if they could come close to that. Or if they can keep up with it,” he said. “So, it’s very off-putting to some…It’s something I had to learn in a past relationship, which sucked to learn through that person, but it makes you better.”
Davidson has been dating 18-year-old supermodel Kaia Gerber since early October, after splitting from actress Margaret Qualley, 25. The breakup came nearly a year after his whirlwind engagement to pop star Ariana Grande, 26, ended.
