Please Don’t Destroy Says Taylor Swift Thought Travis Kelce Was ‘Funny’ on ‘SNL’ Before They Dated

Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy ; Will Heath/NBC
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce had endless invisible strings tying them together before they sparked a romance — including Saturday Night Live’s Please Don’t Destroy.

“We worked with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before they dated,” Ben Marshall, one-third of the writing trio, said on the latest episode of Mike Birbiglia’s “Working It Out” podcast. “And I don’t know [if we should say this], but, she kind of told us that she watched his SNL episode and saw him in our video and was like, ‘This guy seems funny.’”

Marshall, 28, joked that the trio — which consists of him, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy — “brought” the couple “a little bit together.” He noted that while they considered telling the anecdote during their appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in November 2023, they ultimately decided against it in fear of getting heat from fans should the romance go south.

We were like, ‘I think that if then they break up, we will somehow be, like, pitted as causing this disaster,” he recalled to host Birbiglia, laughing. “It’s just a precarious situation. People have strong feelings.” (Birbiglia, for his part, has his own connection to Swift as he starred in the music video for her 2022 single “Anti-Hero.”)

Please Don’t Destroy joined SNL as writers and cast members in 2021 after their videos went viral on TikTok. Swift teamed up with the trio alongside Pete Davidson in November of that year for the musical parody “Three Sad Virgins,” which aired during the season 47 premiere.

We didn’t think that she would do it,” Higgins, 27, told Fallon, 49, of the cameo. “We pitched it to her and we were like, ‘It’s called ‘Three Sad Virgins,’ it’s you and Pete making fun of us.’ And she was immediately like, ‘Yes.’”

Kelce, meanwhile, hosted the NBC sketch comedy series in March 2023 where he portrayed Kurt Lightning, a self-defense coach who sets out to help Please Don’t Destroy after they realize they have no respect from their SNL coworkers.

The NFL star’s appearance came six months before he and Swift went public with their romance in September 2023. The pair began dating earlier that summer after Kelce admitted that he attended her Kansas City Eras Tour concert in an attempt to gift her a friendship bracelet with his phone number. One month after confirming their relationship, the couple made a joint cameo appearance on SNL for the season 49 premiere.