This ‘SNL’ Breakout Kissed Harry Styles. How Will He Top That?

Ben Marshall’s first meeting in Hollywood did not go as expected.

It was only a year after college, during the early days of his comedy career, when he and friends Martin Herlihy and John Higgins were starting to make names for themselves with their sketch videos on YouTube. The three had just signed a manager, who’d arranged a meet-and-greet with executives at Comedy Bang Bang, the influential podcast and production company in L.A., so the trio hopped on a plane assuming they were about to hit it big.

“We came in and pitched a bunch of ideas,” he recalls. “Like, ‘We want to do this and this.’ And the guy very kindly patted us on the back and said, ‘That’s not how this works. I’m just getting to know you.’ ”

It took a bit more time, but Marshall, 31, ultimately got known. In fact, this month, he wraps his first season as an official SNL castmember — after four prior seasons on the writing staff — drawing the curtain on an on-camera debut that included kissing Harry Styles and making Jack Black lose it on live television. And this summer, he’ll also be starring alongside Kevin Hart in 72 Hours, “a big, broad, crazy comedy” about a bachelor party that will mark Marshall’s maiden foray onto the big screen.

“It was my first time being an actor-for-hire,” he says. “But I’m also interested in doing something a bit more grounded. A rom-com would be cool.”

Marshall describes his early trajectory as High School Musical-like. He grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and despite developing an early love of comedy — “My parents got divorced when I was 10, and when we would sleep over at my dad’s house, we would always go to Hollywood Video down the street and rent a VHS with Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler” — he was on a path to play basketball instead. His father was a college star who almost went pro, and pursuing a sports scholarship seemed like the thing to do. “Eventually I was like, ‘No, Dad, I want to perform,’ ” says the 6-foot-5 Marshall.

He transferred to an arts magnet school and then went to NYU, where he joined the prestigious improv group Hammerkatz, which is where he met Herlihy and Higgins, as well as SNL writer Moss Perricone. Moss used to host a show with Rachel Sennott in the basement of his apartment, that was also my bedroom,” says Marshall. “It was called Puke Fest, and it was also a drinking game, and I would move my bed and set up chairs. It smelled amazing.”

A slightly more formal live show, in a slightly less odorous basement, scored him the SNL gig. Please Don’t Destroy was building their following the hard way — performing weekly underneath the East Village bar Von’s — when the shows caught the attention first of SNL castmember Heidi Gardner and then Lorne Michaels, who hired all three Please Don’t Destroy members to join SNL‘s writing staff and produce digital shorts for the show.

Marshall arrived at 30 Rock without much of a directive. “There are a million rules and also no rules at SNL,” he explains. Their breakout effort — a deadpan satire about Jiffy Lube launching a hard seltzer line — made it to air and went viral, and soon they were pitching A-listers every week.

“John pitched an idea for Sydney Sweeney where she’s just in our office confidently farting — we’re having a conversation with her and she’s loudly farting and not acknowledging it,” he says. “To her credit, she was like, ‘That is funny, but maybe let’s go with another idea.’ ”

Marshall says the promotion to full castmember has been life-altering (he recently helped his mom buy a condo) but challenging. “This year at SNL was like being a senior and a freshman at the same time,” he says. “I know my way around the place, and I’m giving advice to the other new cast.”

Knowing his way around a writers room, though, turned out to be poor preparation for performing onstage. During an early-season dress rehearsal for a sketch with host Nikki Glaser called “Beauty and Mr. Beast,” Marshall found himself in a full panic. “I remember being like, ‘Will you help me figure out where I’m supposed to be looking?’ ” he recalls with a laugh. By Josh O’Connor’s episode a month later, playing a sensitive stripper at a bachelorette party, he realized he was completely comfortable in front of a red light.

Still, he continues to have difficulty turning off his writers-room brain. He often wakes up in the middle of the night with a jolt of inspiration for sketches. “My Notes app is just 40,000 pages of random ideas,” he says. “The other night, I wrote down, ‘I’m a janitor son, murderer rising.’ I guess it’s an astrology joke, but it’s just nonsense.”

At 30 Rock, he shares a dressing room with castmate Tommy Brennan, and the two have installed a basketball hoop so they can shoot around before the show airs. To blow off steam beyond Studio 8H, he plays in a weekly pickup game of comedians on the Lower East Side — which recently earned a write-up in The New York Times.

“They said, ‘A name that frequently comes up as one of the best players is Ben Marshall of Please Don’t Destroy,’ ” he recalls. “That was the best piece of press I’ve ever gotten. That means more to me than anything I’ve done in comedy.”

This story appeared in the May 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.