SNL’s Martin Herlihy, 27, will leave the show after five seasons, ahead of Season 52.
Variety confirmed Herlihy’s departure and said NBC declined to comment. Herlihy performed on the show as a member of the sketch trio “Please Don’t Destroy” from Seasons 47 through 50, and then spent Season 51 as part of the writing staff.
Herlihy is the second big name to depart before Season 52, following Chloe Fineman’s announcement in July that she would leave after seven seasons. NBC has kept Season 52 updates mostly under wraps, but Lorne Michaels confirmed to Puck’s Matt Belloni that James Austin Johnson, 37, will return and continue to play Trump.
Season 52 would mark Johnson’s sixth season. Featured Player Tommy Brennan, 32, made comments that indicated he plans to return for the new season, but that has not been confirmed.
As part of the “Please Don’t Destroy” trio, Herlihy wrote and filmed a series of pre-taped sketches along with John Higgins, 30, and Ben Marshall, 31. Higgins left SNL after Season 50, while Marshall became a featured cast member beginning last season.
“Please Don’t Destroy”’s SNL repertoire featured sketches where Herlihy, Higgins, and Marshall played heightened versions of themselves in increasingly bizarre situations. Their sketches often starred celebrity hosts; they sang alongside Taylor Swift in the sketch “Three Sad Virgins” and argued with Bad Bunny over whether the global superstar should play Shrek.
Of the three “Please Don’t Destroy” members, Marshall is the only one without familial ties to SNL; Herlihy’s father, Tim Herlihy, was a writer on SNL and frequently collaborates with Adam Sandler, and Higgins’ father, Steve Higgins, is a longtime producer on the show (as well as Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show announcer).
The group addressed their nepo status in a viral digital short featuring host Dakota Johnson, 36, whose parents are Hollywood bigwigs Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. In the sketch, Johnson skewered “Please Don’t Destroy”'s flop of a feature film, The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, and Herlihy hurled back an insult about Dakota Johnson’s 2023 movie Daddio.
“Is ‘daddio’ who you called to get your job?” Johnson asked, to which Higgins replied, “You wanna do this? You wanna do the parent thing?”
“Not really,” Johnson said. “Nepo truce?”
The new season of SNL premieres on September 26.
