Ben Marshall Breaks From Please Don’t Destroy, Joins ‘SNL’ Cast
Saturday Night Live announced five new hires this afternoon, but one has been a quasi-cast member for a few years now: Ben Marshall, one-third of the Digital Shorts creators Please Don’t Destroy.
The rumor mill suggested Marshall was being considered for the cast, with an unnamed second PPD member staying at SNL as a writer and a third leaving the show. Variety confirmed the gossip this afternoon, as Martin Herlihy will remain with the show’s writing staff while John Higgins is exiting the show to pursue other projects.
Higgins posted his part of the news on Instagram this afternoon. “I can’t believe how lucky I was to be a part of this show,” he wrote. “It was my dream and I got to live it. And to do it with my two best friends and my dad was an unbelievable experience. Thank you to everyone who made my time there so special, it made this decision that much harder. But for now, I’m excited to pursue acting opportunities that I’ll announce soon but today I’m just grateful for everything we got to do. As that fat lil bear Winnie the Pooh once said, ‘How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.’”
“Love you forever brother,” posted Marshall in a reply. “PDD and Rami’s assistant 4 life”
While they’ll no longer create SNL videos, it’s unclear if this is truly the end of Please Don’t Destroy, a sketch comedy group formed by three New York University buddies in 2017 and touring as recently as last month. It was a quick rise for the trio, which some credited to the group’s SNL connections. (Herlihy’s dad is SNL alum and long-time Adam Sandler collaborator Tim Herlihy; Higgins' father is SNL producer and Jimmy Fallon sidekick Steve Higgins.) Ironically, Marshall is the only one in the group without nepo ties to Saturday Night Live.
As a performer, Marshall has stretched his creative limbs of late with recent roles on Poker Face and the upcoming Kevin Hart Netflix movie, 72 Hours. By becoming a featured player, Marshall will return to Saturday Night Live for a fifth season. Please Don’t Destroy joined the show in 2021. He’s been on SNL plenty, plus the group had its own feature film with Conan O’Brien playing Marshall’s carrot-topped dad. That makes Marshall the most visible and familiar of the show’s new hires, despite not being famous enough to have his own stand-alone Wikipedia page.
That experience should help him find his feet faster than most SNL featured players. “When you start doing comedy, you have all these weird rules in your head where you decide you can or can’t do certain things because they’re not cool, or smart, or funny,” Marshall told Esquire in 2023. “But as you become more comfortable with yourself over time, those things just fade away.”
