How ‘Saturday Night Live’ Breakout Please Don’t Destroy Became Show’s Viral Weapon (2024)

Oct. 9, 2021, is the day everything changed for Please Don’t Destroy.

That was when the viral-video trio — Ben Marshall (the ginger, 27), John Higgins (the short one, 26) and Martin Herlihy (glasses, 23) — went from mere Twitter notoriety to the newest breakout stars of Saturday Night Live, on a highly rated episode hosted by Kim Kardashian.

The sketch, shot in a cramped 30 Rock office (their actual workspace), spoofed the ubiquity of hard seltzers with new flavors from JCPenney and Jiffy Lube. It was a simple premise delivered upon by three unabashed comedy nerds.

In doing so, they reminded a pandemic-weary world that good comedy doesn’t require reinventing the wheel — it just requires being funny.

The trio had joined the show as writers a few months earlier. Prior to that, Marshall was working at the 14th Street Y as an after-school counselor, Higgins was temping for an event planning agency, and Herlihy was scooping ice cream at a Van Leeuwen.

But with the success of the seltzer sketch, the three suddenly found themselves sitting on the hottest piece of comedy real estate in the business: a three-minute weekly showcase on SNL.

Not two months later, they’d be starring alongside Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift in a rap video. (Lest their heads get too big, the song, rapped by Davidson, was called “Three Sad Virgins.”)

The trio met on the NYU comedy scene in 2017; Marshall and Herlihy were enrolled there as film students, while Higgins majored in acting and English. It was Marshall who first introduced Herlihy to Higgins, sensing the two shared a comic sensibility. Unbeknownst to him, they shared more than that — both Herlihy and Higgins are the sons of SNL writing legends.

Herlihy’s father is Tim Herlihy, a head writer during his stint in the 1990s. He was responsible for many of the classic Adam Sandler sketches — then went on to write or co-write all of Sandler’s comedies, from 1995’s Billy Madison to 2020’s Hubie Halloween.

Higgins, meanwhile, is the son of Steve Higgins, another former head writer who joined the show in 1995 and has remarkably been with it ever since — in addition to undertaking announcer-sidekick duties on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since its 2014 debut. Following in their fathers’ sketch comedy footsteps, however, was far from a given.

“My dad tried to actively dissuade me from doing show business,” says Higgins.

“I feel like both of our dads were like, ‘It’s rough,'” adds Herlihy.

Undeterred, the three continued to perform together. They cooked up their own stand-up/sketch hybrid show called Please Don’t Destroy My Farm and mounted it at The Peoples Improv Theatre (PIT) in Gramercy.

“It was this weirdly high-concept stand-up show where I was an evil businessman coming to destroy Martin’s farm,” Marshall explains. “We would host other comedians, but it was this weird team situation where it would be my team versus Martin’s team. Everyone obviously wanted Martin’s team to win. No one wants the evil businessman’s team to win.”

Higgins, meanwhile, was enlisted to play a mute cow. “It was way more complicated than it needed to be,” Herlihy concedes.

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Eventually they dropped stand-up from the bill — and “my farm” from the title — and focused on sketches, performing at Brooklyn venues like Union Hall and The Bell House.

The loose sketch show (scenes were beated out with plenty of room for improvisation, à la Curb Your Enthusiasm) soon found a devoted audience at a NoHo spot called Von — “That’s where we really cut our teeth,” says Marshall — where it ran regularly beginning in early 2019.

Then the pandemic hit. With only a handful of YouTube sketches under their belt, the group — Marshall and Herlihy are roommates on the Upper West Side and Higgins lives down the street — pivoted to churning out shorter-form videos, about a minute in length, that lent themselves to sharing on Twitter and TikTok.

The formula is Improv 101: Each video begins with an absurd premise (for example: Marshall gets the same face tattoos as Post Malone). The guys then keep raising the stakes until it devolves into mayhem. That Twitter video format was adapted for TV with the help of SNL director Paul Briganti.

“He really helped us figure out how to translate our style into something that would play in front of the studio audience, which needs a little more hand-holding sometimes, or bigger, clearer moves,” Marshall says. “We’re still figuring it out.”

“They felt brand-new and classic at the same time,” says Briganti. “We bonded over our love for comedic timing and working overtime in the edit.”

It was Briganti who pushed Lorne Michaels to hire Please Don’t Destroy as SNL writers. After lockdown lifted in 2021 and New York saw a cautious return to live comedy, the group mounted an hourlong sketch show at Asylum (formerly the Upright Citizens Brigade space) in Chelsea.

One chilly September night, about two weeks before the current season premiered, they were informed that Michaels was in the crowd.

“It was the scariest show we’ve ever done,” says Herlihy.

“I remember exactly where he was sitting, in the top-left corner,” says Higgins, who adds that Michaels did laugh during the show, contrary to his reputation for deadpan. Michaels came backstage afterward and told the trio, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you guys soon.” Then he spun around and left.

“Somehow, in our brains, that became ‘It’s not going to happen,'” Herlihy recalls.

“We were like, ‘f*ck, man. We blew it,'” says Marshall. “And we didn’t know why.”

Of course, they didn’t blow it. Michaels hired the trio and they were immediately put to work among the show’s writing staff of 20. There was nothing specific in their contracts about doing videos; it was Briganti who suggested they try shooting something loose in their office.

“Then we made that first video, the hard seltzer video,” Marshall says. “And it worked, thank God. So we got to do some more.”

Not all of their videos make it to air. One with Rami Malek demanding a treat for good behavior, for example, was cut for time but lives on YouTube. In their most recent hit video, Lizzo commands them to write her a new song on the spot. (“Lizzo rocked,” notes Herlihy.)

They also write sketches for other performers, and tend to gravitate to newer castmembers like Sarah Sherman, who collaborates with the guys on her “Weekend Update” appearances that roast Colin Jost.

As for the future, might Please Don’t Destroy follow in the footsteps of fellow SNL video trailblazers, the junk-gifting Lonely Island guys, by starring in their own movies?

“Maybe one day,” says Marshall with a smile.

“Open dreams,” adds Herlihy.

This story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.