CNN’s new comedy show is tripling down on familiar faces in late night.
Fresh off the announcement that Roy Wood Jr. would host its upcoming panel show Have I Got News For You, the news network has now cast its two team captains.
Comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black will take on captain duties for the show, which is set to bow next month. It is an adaptation of the long-running BBC series of the same name.
According to a CNN press release, Ruffin and Black will lead “a rotating collection of guests including notable entertainers, political figures, and comedians through an array of comic games and quick-witted panel conversations that test their knowledge of current events.”
“It is our hope that this show will take people from saying, ‘This is CNN.’ to ‘THIS is CNN!?!?,’” Ruffin said in a statement.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Roy Wood Jr. and Amber Ruffin as Have I Got News For You‘s DEI hire,” Black added. “I’m looking forward to spreading as much disinformation as possible on America’s most trusted news network. My main focus has been, and will continue to be, pleasing my handlers in the Kremlin.”
Like Wood, who served as a correspondent on The Daily Show for eight years, Ruffin and Black have their own ties to the world of late night.
In addition to hosting her own late-night show on Peacock, The Amber Ruffin Show, from 2020 through 2022, Ruffin is a longtime writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers. She’s been with that show since it began in 2014, and was the first Black woman to write for an American late-night network talk show.
In addition to being a regular late-night guest, Michael Ian Black was in the running to host The Late Late Show in 2004, auditioning on-air during its guest-hosted period—though the job ultimately went to Craig Ferguson.
Have I Got News For You originated on the BBC in 1990. Its producer, Hat Trick Productions, developed this American adaptation with the CNN Originals team. The British version’s team captains are satirist Ian Hislop and Whose Line Is It Anyway? alum Paul Merton.
CNN’s Have I Got News For You will air Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET beginning September 14. It will also be made available to stream on Max the next day.
