First Post-'SNL' Project for Departing Please Don’t Destroy Member Revealed

I was legitimately bummed when I heard that Please Don’t Destroy would be ending their tenure on Saturday Night Live. Then came the additional shock that they’d be splitting, but two of them would stay behind while the other moved on to other projects. The placements made sense. Ben Marshall would become a featured cast member, Martin Herlihy would stay on as a writer, and John Higgins would move on to pursue acting. Those fit their talents well.

I’ve enjoyed all three of these guys as performers, but Ben is the real standout. The videos starring him, from the group’s earlier days, are what got me into them. Herlihy focusing on writing makes sense because that would make sense for any of them. Higgins? He’s a good actor and brings some genuine heat to some of their sketches. I was more surprised that he would walk away from SNL, a place where his dad is a producer, for something more uncertain.

Maybe that’s the reason in and of itself! He didn’t want to exist under his dad’s shadow. Perhaps he also wanted to become a cast member and was passed up in favor of Ben. It could be that the hustle, bustle, and insane hours of the show were too much for him. Any answer would make sense. But the acting world is hard, and Higgins isn’t exactly unique. Regardless, he’s already got his first post-SNL work lined up.

Higgins, along with Ed O’Neill and Danielle Brooks, joined a new Cameron Diaz movie called Bad Day. The film, described as a comedy version of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (okay, sure), will see Diaz playing a mom who is trying to keep a promise to her daughter on the worst day of her life. Jake Szymanski will direct Bad Day, with a script written by Laura Solon. The movie will drop, then presumably disappear, on Netflix.

Brooks and Higgins will play NYPD detectives who are searching for Diaz, and that sounds like a pretty fun pairing. If I had to guess, Brooks will be the super serious one, and Higgins will be her bumbling partner. Hijinks ensue. I would assume that the former SNL member has more than this lined up, but this is a better start than I expected. There was a moment where I thought he might just disappear.

He certainly wouldn’t be the first. Plenty of folks have left the hit show, expecting to make big moves elsewhere, only to watch their careers slip away. Though, to be fair, most of them didn’t have a reference on their resume that holds such sway. That isn’t even a knock at the nepotism of all this (something Higgins has poked fun at before). I believe he is genuinely talented. I just didn’t think he would hit the ground running like this, and I was wrong.