Please Don’t Destroy, a comedy trio well known for their pre-recorded videos shown on “Saturday Night Live,” will be bringing their comedic talent to the University of Rhode Island on Sunday.
The Student Entertainment Committee chose Please Don’t Destroy because they are extremely popular on “SNL” with their webseries, according to Jaimee Deslauriers, the president of the SEC. They collaborate with a lot of celebrities and have made fandoms through that.
“I just feel that their comedy is more college student related,” Deslauriers said. “We’ve had acts in the past like Noel Miller, who’s comedy is also geared towards college students, and they’ve been successful.”
The comedy trio is made up of three young comedians: Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, who write sketches and make pre-recorded videos for “SNL.” They perform their live sketches at festivals and colleges across the country, according to their website . All of the pre-recorded videos for “SNL” are found there as well.
One “SNL” pre-recorded sketch, “Three Sad Virgins,” which features Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift, has 9.4 million views, according to a Vanity Fair article . In the sketch, Davidson asks the trio to star in a music video he’s making. However, the video is about Davidson humiliating the comedy trio, calling them “three sad virgins.” Near the end of the sketch, Swift joins in the humiliation by singing a bridge about the trio.
Vanity Fair added that the trio met when they were students at New York University. They started their group by doing a weekly show at a bar called Von downtown in New York City. Their live sketches are similar to their videos, but they include singing songs while wearing multicolored tracksuits.
According to a “Tonight Show” interview, Higgins is the son of Steve Higgins, the announcer of the Tonight Show and Herlihy is the son of Tim Herlihy, a writer for SNL. Marshall was an intern for the Tonight Show. The trio’s first sketch was “Please Don’t Destroy My Farm,” performed at the Pit Theater in New York City, where Marshall was an evil businessman, Higgins was a cow and Herlihy was a farmer. Higgins said in the interview that after that sketch, they dropped “My Farm” and wrote other sketches.
Additionally in the interview, the trio said that Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer for “SNL,” came to one of their shows. According to Marshall, they had been performing weekly before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, they made videos on Twitter and TikTok. After the pandemic, “SNL” members noticed them and they started coming to the trio’s shows.
“When we heard that [Michaels] was coming, it was the type of nervousness where I forgot what my voice sounded like,” Marshall said in the interview.
Deslauriers said because Please Don’t Destroy is a sketch comedy group, she expects sketches and some crowdwork. Also, since they are three people, they will bounce off of each other’s jokes.
Deslauriers said she’s excited to see what the trio is going to do.