Joe Pesci will play Pete Davidson's grandfather in rare TV appearance

Joe Pesci has come out of semiretirement to star alongside Edie Falco and comedian Pete Davidson in the upcoming Peacock streaming series "Bupkis," a fictionalized version of Davidson's life.

Peacock parent NBCUniversal announced that "Goodfellas" Academy Award winner Pesci, 79, will star as Davidson's grandfather on the show. Falco ("The Sopranos," "Nurse Jackie"), who grew up in West Islip and Northport, was previously announced to play Davidson's mother.

Pesci most recently appeared in Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" (2019) — for which the star received the latest of his three Oscar nominations — and a 2019 Google Assistant TV commercial in which he watches a different ad for the product in which he did a one-line voice-over. Aside from providing a voice in a 2015 animated feature, he was last seen on-screen in 2010, in director Taylor Hackford's "Love Ranch," starring opposite Helen Mirren.

Pesci — who has starred in films including Scorsese's "Casino" (1995), "Goodfellas" (1990) and "Raging Bull" (1980), as well as the first two "Home Alone" movies (1990, 1992), "My Cousin Vinny" (1992) and three "Lethal Weapon" films (1989-98) — has rarely appeared on television. He starred in the 1985 NBC TV-movie pilot "Half Nelson," about a former New York cop considered "too short” to be an actor, and who worked for a Hollywood security agency while continuing to pursue his acting dreams. It served as the two-hour first episode of an eight-episode series. Another "Saturday Night Live" veteran, Victoria Jackson, co-starred.

Pesci also starred in a 1992 episode of the HBO horror-anthology "Tales from the Crypt" and played himself in a 1994 episode of the NBC sitcom "The John Larroquette Show."

Neither Pesci, Falco, nor Davidson has evident social media, and none has commented on the casting. In an onstage appearance at the NBCUniversal advertising upfront event on May 16, Falco told Davidson, "I'm so excited to be playing your mother in this show, Pete," according to Deadline.com. She then alluded to her "Sopranos” role as a New Jersey mob wife and mother: "Finally, I get to play an overwhelmed mother of two living in a world of corruption. Except this time, it's Staten Island."

Davidson is an executive producer on the upcoming series alongside "SNL" impresario Lorne Michaels and others. "The series will combine grounded storytelling with absurd elements from the unfiltered and completely original worldview for which Pete is well known," the announcement said.

The common Yiddish word "bupkis" means "nothing," usually used in a pejorative sense.