A man certainly in the limelight these past few weeks is SNL star Pete Davidson, who, amid the Kanye "Ye" West and Kim Kardashian drama, finds himself in the spotlight like never before, this time for drastically different reasons. The news emerged just a few days ago that the Jeff Bezos owned Blue Origin will feature Pete Davidson among a crew of five on a flight to space. This comes after the successful launches of space flights by billionaires such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson, with a clear vision of commercial space flights in the future.
However, just as the news emerged of Davidson's involvement in the space program, it is as quickly effectively shut down, as Blue Origin announces that the upcoming flight is postponed and will now no longer be joined by the actor, whenever it launches. With rumors and rumblings ablaze of Kanye West being involved in this decision somehow, these have also been denied by both Blue Origin and the concerned authorities and representatives. This follows a trend of featuring celebrities in space flights to drum up popularity and exposure for the missions, with celebrities such as Star Trek star William Shatner already having made his way to the stars, and the announcement of a Tom Cruise led film to be filmed in space entirely.
There has been no confirmation as to who will be replacing Davidson in the planned flight, and in a shocking twist of events, fans have urged Kanye West to be taking the vacant spot, however, there is no confirmation of the matter as yet. The flight has been shifted to March 29 which was confirmed in a recent tweet that highlights Pete Davidson also no longer joining the flight. A representative of Saturday Night Live also said that the show would not be airing new episodes this week or the next, possibly due to the prior planned space mission. It also emerged that the five other passengers on the flight were paying customers, who have been named Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and George Nield.
Will Pete Davidson Be Replaced With Another Celebrity?
It is also still unclear which celebrity if any, would be replacing Davidson, and the planned flight marks the fourth space flight by the company and the twentieth in history. Space travel really made a buzz with the traveling of legendary Star Trek actor William Shatner's trip into space, which at 90 years of age, made him the oldest person to ever travel to space. In the last Blue Origin flight, Good Morning America! host Michael Strahan also made the journey and described his experience as "crazy" in a statement to ABC.
However, Davidson's pulling out is not the first instance of a celebrity pulling out from a planned flight into the stars after last summer, actor Ashton Kutcher also pulled out of the planned Virgin Atlantic space flight, which was originally planned for a decade earlier, after a mutual decision between his family, and narrated that due to a decade passing, after changes like marriage and children in his life, after discussion with his wife, actress Mila Kunis, he decided to not be involved in the venture anymore, given that a flight to space has associated risks and is a still a big gamble. However, many are looking forward to seeing Davidson's replacement on the flight, and SNL back on their TV screens.