Early life
Higgins grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, in a family with deep roots in comedy and entertainment.1 His father, Steve Higgins, has served as a producer and head writer at Saturday Night Live for decades and is the announcer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.1 His extended family includes comedian Chris Elliott and actress Abby Elliott, making entertainment an ambient presence throughout his upbringing.2 He attended New York University's College of Arts and Sciences, where he joined the Hammerkatz sketch comedy troupe and met Ben Marshall and Martin Herlihy.2 He graduated with an English degree in 2018.1
Career
At NYU, Higgins, Ben Marshall, and Martin Herlihy formed the sketch group Please Don't Destroy in 2017.2 After the group went viral across TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram, all three were hired as writer-performers on Saturday Night Live in 2021 for its 47th season.2 Their prerecorded short films and sketches became among the most-shared content from the show during their run. (Notably, Herlihy's father also worked as an SNL writer, giving the two a shared family background in the institution.)4
The trio leveraged that momentum into a feature film: Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, produced by Judd Apatow, which they co-wrote and executive produced. It was released on Peacock in 2023.5 Higgins also appeared in the mainstream studio film A Man Called Otto (2022, starring Tom Hanks) and the indie comedy The Country Club (2023).6
In September 2025, the SNL shake-up separated the trio's official roles on the show: Ben Marshall was promoted to featured cast member, Martin Herlihy remained on the writing staff, and Higgins departed to pursue acting full-time.3 Please Don't Destroy continued as a group outside of SNL, with all three publicly committing to the brand going forward. At their first live reunion performance in Portland after the split, Higgins declared from the stage: "It's PDD forever, baby!" Marshall added: "I love these boys so much... This is a new chapter, but we're not going to stop working together anytime soon."7
Higgins moved quickly into television and film work after leaving SNL. He was cast in the Netflix action comedy Bad Day, directed by Jake Szymanski and starring Cameron Diaz, in which he plays Madewell, the partner of a key detective character.8 The ensemble also includes Ed O'Neill, Danielle Brooks, Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, Rob Corddry, and Mark Duplass; production began in New Jersey in late 2025.8 In March 2026, it was announced that Higgins had been cast in a recurring role opposite Owen Wilson in Season 2 of the Apple TV+ golf comedy series Stick, created by Jason Keller and also featuring Marc Maron, Timothy Olyphant, and Judy Greer.9
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
In Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), Higgins appeared in the small but memorable role of the Baba Booey Shouter, credited on screen as Johnny Higgins. The character is a bystander in a trench coat who interrupts a live mayoral press conference, during which Mayor Bradley is attempting to claim no ghosts exist, by shouting "Baba Booey" at the camera.
Director Paul Feig wrote the gag into the film as a nod to his fandom of The Howard Stern Show.10 "Baba Booey" is the nickname of Gary Dell'Abate, the show's executive producer, whose mispronunciation of "Baba Looey" during a July 26, 1990 episode became a running joke11 and eventually the title of Dell'Abate's autobiography.12 The phrase has since become a tradition among Stern fans, shouted during live television and radio broadcasts as a crank-call signature.11 The scene draws a parallel to a similar background-upstaging moment in the first Ghostbusters film. The casting of Higgins was a natural fit given his father Steve's presence in the same production.
