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Chad in space: 'Saturday Night Live' star Pete Davidson lands seat on next Blue Origin space flight
The actor and comedian will blast off with Blue Origin later this month.
Jeff Bezos' private spaceflight company, Blue Origin, is adding yet another celebrity astronaut to its ranks. After early launches that included sci-fi legends, TV stars, and Bezos himself, the company revealed on Monday that a launch later this month will include Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson.
Davidson, whose film credits include The Suicide Squad and his semi-autobiographical comedy The King of Staten Island, was revealed as a passenger on Blue Origin's fourth crewed flight Monday morning. Davidson will take the flight alongside five other Blue Origin customers, including Party America CEO Marty Allen, University of North Carolina Professor Jim Kitchen, president of Commerical Space Technologies Dr. George Nield, and philanthropists Marc and Sharon Hagle.
Davidson's flight marks the latest in a string of celebrity trips to space on Blue Origin New Shepard missions, which kicked off last summer when Bezos himself flew to space alongside his brother Mark. That inaugural crewed flight also included Oliver Daeman, the youngest person ever in space, and aviator Wally Funk, who at 82 years old became the oldest person in space during the flight. Funk's record was broken just weeks later when Star Trek legend William Shatner flew on Blue Origin's second flight at the age of 90. In November, NFL star and Good Morning America host Michael Strahan made a Blue Origin trip on what was the New Shepard's first mission with a crew of six passengers.
Now it's Davidson's turn, as the actor and comedian joins New Shepard's 20th overall and fourth crewed flight later this month when it launches from Blue Origin's facility in West Texas. Ironically, Davidson has already led a parody of a commercial space flight, though not one that involved Bezos. Last year, he played his clueless character "Chad" in an SNL sketch co-starring Elon Musk, in which Chad was tasked with journey to a SpaceX Mars colony on a rescue mission.
There's no word yet on how SNL itself will handle Davidson's trip to space, but we can probably expect the crew over at Weekend Update to put something together.
