WARNING: There are some light spoilers for The Running Man, which is now playing on the 2025 movie schedule. Very light. Hardly any at all.
With Glen Powell hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, now the perfect time to talk about one of his co-stars in The Running Man, Martin Herlihy. Not only is Herlihy a writer on Saturday Night Live (and an occasional performer), he’s also the son of a legendary SNL writer, Tim Herlihy. If you don’t know Tim Herlihy by name, you certainly know his work both on the show and with his longtime collaborator, Adam Sandler.
The Running Man Needed Some Comic Relief
It’s been a long wait for director Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man, and I have to say, he nailed it. Some people may quibble with the ending (which is fair) or a few other nitpicks, but it’s so much closer to the source material than the 1987 version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (which I do secretly love) that it should be everyone’s watch list this fall.
One of the many differences between the 1987 version and the 2025 version of the movie is the tone. While the Schwarzenegger movie was about as campy as a movie can get, replete with classic Arnold one-liners, the new one has a much darker vibe, like the original Stephen King novel. Martin Herlihy’s character, Jansky, brings some much-appreciated comic relief to the film. Without getting too spoiler-y, Herlihy plays a goofball contestant alongside Powell’s Ben Richards and Katy O’Brian’s Laughlin. He’s very funny in the role.
Tim Herlihy Took A Winding Road To Comedy
While comedy may come naturally to Martin Herlihy, being the son of a comedy legend, for Tim, the road to comedy success was surprising. Tim studied accounting at NYU and didn’t have plans to go into comedy. However, his college roommate was none other than Adam Sandler. He started collaborating with Sandler in college, and that partnership remained after school and into Sandler’s run on SNL.
Tim Herlihy eventually went to law school, but he kept writing with the Sand Man, collaborating on the script for Billy Madison at night, while working as a lawyer during the day. Before that movie came out, Herlihy gave up practicing law and was hired as a writer on SNL in 1994, eventually becoming head write, and he’s at least partly responsible for some of the most enduring characters from the show in the ‘90s. He’s a legend in Studio 8H and has written a dozen movies alongside Sandler, including 2025’s Happy Gilmore 2, and occasionally pops up in cameos and small roles in those movies, like playing a priest in Grown Ups.
Like Father, Like Son
Martin Herlihy has followed in his dad’s footsteps as a writer and digital short creator on SNL as part of his comedy troupe Please Don’t Destroy, along with Ben Marshall and John Higgins. They, like Sandler and Tim Herlihy, got their start at NYU. Please Don’t Destroy is no longer producing digital shorts for SNL, but Herlihy has stayed on as a writer.
It remains to be seen how successful The Running Man will be in theaters, but there’s little doubt that we’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more from the younger Herlihy in the future.