Amber Ruffin

 ( 1979 Births ) 

After returning to the United States, Ruffin performed as part of The Second City in both Denver and Chicago, where she first met future Late Night co-writer Jenny Hagel. In 2011, she moved to Los Angeles; joined the YouTube comedy group RobotDown featuring Jessica Lowe, Carlo Corbellini, and Davey Vorhes; and appeared on an episode of Key & Peele. She also joined the nationally recognized sketch and musical comedy troupe Story Pirates, where she performed sketches based on stories written by kids. Ruffin was also a member of Sacred Fools Theater Company performing a serialized version of King of Kong: A Musical Parody, a two-woman show parodying the documentary The King of Kong. The musical was co-written with co-star Lauren Van Kurin and directed by fellow Boom Chicago alum Brendan Hunt, with music by David Schmoll. King of Kong appeared at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival winning Best Overall Musical 2014, and the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival (with Hunt subbing for an unavailable Ruffin), where it won Best Musical & Outstanding Songwriting. The show returned to Sacred Fools in September 2016 for a performance attended by parody target Billy Mitchell himself.

In 2013, Saturday Night Live received backlash for not having any Black women on the cast. Ruffin auditioned for the show in 2014 alongside Tiffany Haddish, Leslie Jones, Gabrielle Dennis, Nicole Byer, Simone Shepherd, and Bresha Webb. Ruffin was unsuccessful in her audition. A few days later Seth Meyers called to ask her to be a writer on his new late night show. Ruffin has been a writer on Late Night with Seth Meyers since the show's start in 2014. In addition to writing she also appears in several recurring segments on the program including: "Amber Says What?", "Amber's Minute of Fury", "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" (with fellow writer Jenny Hagel), and "Point, Counterpoint". "Amber Ruffin Says What!?" (National Public Radio) When the George Floyd protests began, Ruffin opened a week's worth of shows by retelling her experiences with police officers and police brutality. Meyers interviewed Ruffin as a guest for the show's 1,000th episode.

When not writing for Late Night, Ruffin wrote for the Comedy Central show Detroiters and was a regular narrator on the Comedy Central show Drunk History. In 2017, Ruffin developed a single-camera comedy show, Going Dutch, but the series was not ordered. She was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award in the category "Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) Series" in 2017.

In February 2018, Ruffin hosted the 70th Writers Guild of America awards ceremony.

In 2019, NBC ordered a pilot presentation for Ruffin's single-camera comedy series Village Gazette. In the same year Ruffin was a writer for the first season of A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO.

On September 25, 2020 Ruffin's late-night talk show, The Amber Ruffin Show, premiered on NBC's streaming service Peacock. The show broke away from the typical late night structure, foregoing guests and focusing instead on topical sketches. The show was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award in the category "Comedy/Variety Sketch Series" in 2021. The show was also nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.

Ruffin and her sister Lacey Lamar co-authored a book, titled You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, which was released on January 12, 2021, and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list.