Pete Davidson & Machine Gun Kelly Got Real About Why They Never Expected to Be Dads: ‘We Thought We’d Die Young’

There’s a specific kind of honesty that only shows up once you’ve outlived your own expectations. That’s the energy running through the premiere episode of The Pete Davidson Show, Davidson’s new Netflix video podcast, which debuted Jan. 30 with MGK as its first guest — and ended up saying far more about fatherhood than either man probably planned.

Some quick context, because it matters. Pete Davidson welcomed his first child, daughter Scottie Rose, with girlfriend Elsie Hewitt in December 2025. MGK (born Colson Baker), is already a dad twice over: to 16-year-old daughter Casie with ex Emma Cannon, and to baby daughter Saga Blade with on-and-off (most recently off) ex-fiancée Megan Fox. But the two didn’t really ever seem to have fatherhood on the mind, at least not when they were in their 20s and navigating newfound fame and substance abuse issues.

“I think we both thought we were going to die pretty young,” Davidson says midway through the episode, speaking plainly about the years when addiction and instability shaped their lives. He added that he’s “equally impressed” they’ve made it far enough to deal with adulthood at all. MGK agreed, joking that their “bipolar has synced up,” allowing them to take care of each other, before Davidson lands the thought: “Thank God…because we would be dead, for sure.”

MGK also shared the parenting advice he says actually stuck, crediting The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary for one line that reframed how he shows up. “Let go of control and just be your child’s biggest cheerleader,” he said, later explaining that his role isn’t steering the ship — it’s keeping it in good shape for wherever it’s headed.

For Davidson, it aligns with how he’s been talking about new parenthood elsewhere: less interest in crowd-sourced wisdom, more focus on routine, presence, and figuring it out as it comes. He’s said before that the best parenting advice he’s gotten was from Eddie Murphy — and wasn’t actually advice at all. “The best advice I actually got, and I hate — it’s so name-droppy — but Eddie Murphy gave me great advice,” Davidson said on Jimmy Fallon last week. “Because I asked him for advice. And he goes, ‘The best advice is no advice. You can’t tell another man how to raise his child.’”

And even though Davidson voiced his surprise at how far he and MGK have come, it seems like being a dad has always been in the back of Davidson’s mind. In an interview on Kevin Hart’s Hart to Heart talk show back 2022, the Saturday Night Live alumnus shared, “My favorite thing ever, which I’m yet to achieve, is I wanna have a kid,” Davidson said. Two years before that, he told Charlamagne that having kids was his “dream,” and that he wanted to honor his dad, a New York City firefighter who lost his life in the Sept. 11 attacks, while raising his own kids.

The episode never turns sentimental — Davidson even gets a playful jab in about MGK’s 2014 hairline — and it doesn’t pretend either man has it all figured out. What it does show is two friends clocking the same thing at once: they’re still here, they didn’t expect to be, and now there are kids who depend on that fact.

More on Pete Davidson & MGK’s fatherhood moments:

Before you go, click here to see all the celebrities who have opened up about the struggles of co-parenting.