Amber Ruffin is convinced that she won’t be this busy forever, but sitting across from her on Zoom, I’m not so sure.
Ruffin’s been on a hot streak for a while now: She’s a team captain on CNN’s new Roy Wood Jr.-hosted Have I Got News for You—an adaptation of a long-running British comedy panel show. She co-wrote last year’s Broadway adaptation of Some Like It Hot, which scored her a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical, and this year she updated The Wiz for a limited-run Broadway revival. And that’s not even mentioning the Bigfoot musical that she also debuted in New York and Los Angeles this summer.
Through it all, Ruffin has continued to write for Late Night with Seth Meyers, where she’s been a breakout star since the show began in 2014. As we speak, she confirms that she’ll never leave. (“Unless they fire me, which I’ve given them more than enough reason to,” she says with a grin.) She also doesn’t rule out the possibility that she could one day return to hosting her own series, as she did for three seasons with Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show. At the same time, she’s not one to plan these things too laboriously.
“I don’t set goals,” Ruffin says. “I don’t have any, like, ‘By a certain time, I want to make sure to have X number of musicals’ or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t care. Maybe I’ll have some more, maybe I won’t. As long as I can do exactly what I feel like doing—and that’s kind of where I am now—then I’m just gonna do that.” Twice during our interview, she labels this mindset as greedy, but really, it seems a lot more like creative hunger. With an artistic metabolism like this, it’s hard to imagine why the opportunities would ever slow down.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
LateNighter: You already spend a ton of time working on topical material as a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. What made you want to spend even more time interacting with and talking about news on Have I Got News for You?
Amber Ruffin: Well, it’s the thing I’m good at. Might as well ring every last drop out of it!
No, it’s just very fun. It’s also what my friends and I are doing, regardless, right? Like, if I hang out with Roy, which is extremely likely, odds are, we’ll be talking about what’s happening in the news. So we might as well be getting paid for it.
Fair enough. How well did you know your fellow team captain, Michael Ian Black, before this?
I met Michael Ian Black during the audition… He and I actually auditioned together. It was a bunch of people like us—a bunch of newsy comedy guys—and we would go in four by four or whatever, and we would do the segments that we now do on the show. Me and Michael Ian Black went in together, and it was the most fun. He makes me laugh so hard. You never get someone who knows so much about the news but is also just a Grade-A doofus. Extremely silly. And that’s me calling someone silly.
Speaking of silly, you guys cover a very wide array of news stories. I wonder so far, what’s been your favorite to riff on?
We do a segment called “Odd One Out,” where we have to figure out which one of four celebrities is the odd one out. Last week, the odd one out included Michael Ian Black, and we found out that he dropped out of college to tour the country as Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. That’s just the best piece of news I’ve ever received. And I’ll make fun of him until I die from it.
That seems more than fair. What’s it like working on a show where you don’t have to write a single word? Is that a nice change of pace?
Yes. It’s so good. It’s so nice. Every time I come in, I have, like, a small panic, because I go, “Well, where’s my computer? Oh, yeah…”
One thing you don’t have to write on Late Night are the Day Drinking sessions. Do you ever get to sit in on those?
I’ve been to a lot of them. I haven’t been to the last few, but I’ve been to a bunch. And let me tell you, that man is drunk.
I mean, you can tell. Which was the most fun to be in the room for, and why?
The funnest was Rihanna. That was my favorite to watch. She was hilarious. She was just improvising some of the funniest sh*t we could have never written. She’s very talented.
I do remember Seth seeming quite drunk in that one.
A f**king mess. A mess. She was drunk, too, but she was holding it together.
How long is the recovery time from one of those?
I still don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with Seth or how he does it. But I’m watching him drink the things, so I don’t know how he lives, because we gotta go to work the next day.
That’s what I wondered. I’m like, do you just show up to work wrecked the next day?
I think so. I think he’s just a mess.
You’ve also hosted your own late-night show, The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock. How did that experience impact you as a writer?
The main thing I learned during The Amber Ruffin Show was to let other people do some work. Because I wasn’t really about that. Like, those first couple episodes, ooh, buddy, being like, ‘Thank you, thank you. Yes, no, we will not be using that.’ But then I chilled out just a half an ounce and realized that everyone I hired was a genius, and then I had a much funner time.
Does it create more stress having your name on the show?
I don’t know that it was stress. I mean, sure it was stress, but it was also greed. I wanted to put up all the things I couldn’t put up at Late Night with Seth. And it is very, very fun to put up your stuff. And then you do that like four or five times, then you go, ‘Okay, what’s the best thing?’ But you just don’t have that point of view, because the best thing you can write has always been the best thing. And then when you open it up, it’s so much better.
Switching gears a bit: Earlier this year, you debuted Bigfoot, the Musical, which is all about this inept mayor who uses Bigfoot as a scapegoat for poor leadership. That feels pretty topical right now. I wondered, was that perhaps inspired by anyone in real life?
I just love a bad guy. I think the best thing bad guys do is convince people to vote against their own interests—to ignore their own wellbeing. Like, I just think that’s so magical. So I wrote about that a little bit with Bigfoot, but mostly I just love it when a bad guy is horrible. Nothing’s funnier than a villain. Nothing.
What is your personal big relationship to Bigfoot lore? Do you have one?
I have zero relationship to Bigfoot lore. I simply love it, and I love that so many adults agreed this is a real thing. It’s happening. It’s something we need to focus on and worry about. I love it. If somebody loves to do silly things with their free time, I’m all about it. Let’s find the Bigfoot.
This year you also updated The Wiz and brought it back to Broadway. How did that show help shape your comedic sensibilities as a young aspiring artist?
The Wiz is very weird-forward, and it makes no apologies for that, and it kind of colors what the world is. Because The Wizard of Oz is weird, but it’s not, like, weird and beautiful. I feel like The Wiz is weird and beautiful first, whereas The Wizard of Oz is very pointed.
The Wiz… had a lot of perfectly fine singing in it; it had a lot of personality hires. I think that’s fun and I think that’s cool. Years from now, you wait and see, I’m gonna put up a Broadway show and it’s gonna be all f**king personality hires. It’s gonna be comedy first.
It’s lovely to hear lovely singing, but there’s this fun embarrassment when you’re watching someone who can’t really sing really just get after it. That’s so neat. It’s like seeing someone naked.
Was The Wizard of Oz itself a big one for you when you were younger?
The Wiz was a big one for me when I was younger. The Wizard of Oz, I mean, once you get a Black version of something, and you’ve got Black children, you have them watch the Black version.
I can remember never knowing who… what’s the lady… Shirley Temple! No clue who that was until I was, like, 20. And my friend was like, “Oh yeah, look at this child tap dancing.” I was like, ‘What a delight. How dare my parents rob me of this?’ I go home, and I’m like, ‘How dare you? You know this is what I would like.’ They were like, “This child be dancing with old men in blackface.” And I was like, ‘Goddammit.’
Yeah, probably don’t need that. Artistically, I feel like you are in so many spaces right now, between late night, and this new game show, and theater. Is there a direction you’re really excited to embrace? Or is it more just being open to all the opportunities?
I don’t ever make plans. I don’t ever set goals. I don’t do that. I just take what is coming, and I make sure to stay very greedy, and that’s how I function…
When sh*t gets lean, then I’m gonna have to start being more intentional. But now I’m very intentional about having a good time, end of list. This can’t possibly hold forever. So I’m just gonna ride this good time thing until the wheels fall off. Then when it comes time to buckle down and get serious, then maybe I’ll do that.
She needs here own show again. One of the funniest bits on Late Night is the “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” – David Letterman mentioned to Seth he’d still be on the air if he had bits like that. Amber and Jenny make me laugh every time!