Olivia O'Brien Says She Found Out Pete Davidson Moved On Via Tabloids

Singer Olivia O'Brien is pulling back the curtain on what she says was a painful and very public surprise back in 2020. The 26-year-old recently aired her frustrations about Pete Davidson in a candid social media moment that quickly caught the internet's attention.

The Comment That Started Everything

O'Brien's remarks surfaced when she jumped into the comments section of an Instagram post that was already calling out Pete Davidson over some widely criticized comments he made about female influencers. Rather than simply hitting "like" and moving on, Olivia shared her own experience with the Saturday Night Live alum.

"I was dating him in 2020 and found out we were no longer together by seeing on Snapchat Daily Mail that he went public with a more famous woman," she wrote, adding that she considered him "an absolute joke of a human being." Ouch.

She didn't stop there. Responding to another commenter, she offered a little context about just how connected the two had been: she described round-the-clock texting and falling asleep on FaceTime together when they weren't in the same place — making his apparent ghosting feel all the more jarring, at least from her perspective.

A Very Different Story in 2022

What makes this latest commentary especially interesting is that Olivia's tune has changed quite a bit since the last time she spoke about Pete publicly. According to Just Jared, during a 2022 appearance on BFFs With Dave Portnoy, Josh Richards, and Brianna Chickenfry, she described him warmly as "funny" and "a really sweet guy."

At the time, she had been reacting to a Deuxmoi tip (later picked up by Cosmopolitan) that referenced a "B-list pop star/influencer" Pete had been seeing before going public with British actress Phoebe Dynevor. When the podcast hosts connected the dots to Olivia, she seemed genuinely caught off guard — saying she couldn't believe anyone had figured it out, calling it "breaking news" two years after the fact.

Fast forward to that same period, though, and Olivia herself walked things back. She posted an Instagram Story saying media outlets were twisting her words "waaay out of context" and insisted she had never claimed to formally date anyone — just that she had been texting him a couple of years prior.

Pete's Rep and His Own Perspective

For his part, Pete Davidson's representative pushed back on Olivia's more recent claims, stating there was "no truth" to what she described. Davidson himself has been relatively open lately about his romantic history with other high-profile exes: in a September chat with Variety, he spoke warmly about where things stand with both Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande today.

Pete has certainly kept busy on the personal and professional fronts. Fans have been following developments around his co-parenting arrangement with Elsie Hewitt, and Elsie has even publicly shouted him out as her "baby daddy" after a fun night out. On the work side, he recently lit up Coney Island alongside Camila Mendes for the film Tommy Karate.

What This Moment Tells Us

Whether or not all the details align between Olivia's account and Pete's rep's denial, the moment taps into a bigger conversation about how people — especially in the public eye — navigate the messy, often wordless endings that can come with celebrity dating. Finding out a relationship is over through a tabloid headline is, by any standard, a rough way to get the news.

Olivia O'Brien's candor, laced with her signature humor (plenty of "lmfao" energy throughout), clearly struck a chord online. And with Pete Davidson's name rarely far from the headlines these days, something tells us this story isn't quite finished yet.