By now most people who read Heathen are, I’m sure, aware of the SNL trio Please Don’t Destroy, which is comprised of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy. They make jokes about the fact that Higgins and Herlihy are SNL legacies.

Higgins’ father is Steve Higgins, now the longtime announcer on Fallon’s Tonight Show, but previously a writer on SNL. Higgins also cameoed in a Timberlake monologue years ago as an obsessed fan there at the expense of his daughter, which was super funny.

Herlihy’s father is Tim Herlihy, a longtime collaborator of Adam Sandler and former writer-producer on the show. Sandler sketches have sometimes referenced “that Herlihy boy” as an in-joke, which at this point is hilariously ambiguous.

Ben Marshall, though, is just a regular guy as noted in this PDD skit with Dakota Johnson about nepo babies.

So, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the SNL kids would’ve known each other for years… and yet NO. In fact, it was Marshall who introduced them to each other when all 3 were at NYU:

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.

How’d it come up? Like was it, “oh, what’s your dad do?” “Oh, he worked at SNL” “NO WAY!”