Amber Ruffin

Amber Mildred Ruffin, born January 9, 1979, in Omaha, Nebraska, is a comedian, writer, actress, and Broadway book writer. The youngest of five children born to Theresa and James Ruffin, she grew up in Omaha, where she learned Signing Exact English as a child in order to communicate with a deaf neighbor. She graduated from Benson High School in 1996.

Ruffin began her performing career in 2001, taking part in local theater and improv productions in Omaha. While appearing with her improv troupe at a Chicago event, she encountered Charna Halpern, comedian and owner of iO Theater, who urged Ruffin to relocate to Chicago and predicted she would find full-time comedy work within a year. After completing her coursework at iO in 2008, Ruffin moved to Amsterdam to write and perform with the improv comedy troupe Boom Chicago Amsterdam. Upon returning to the United States, she performed with The Second City in both Denver and Chicago, where she first met writer Jenny Hagel. In 2011, Ruffin relocated to Los Angeles, joining the YouTube comedy group RobotDown alongside Jessica Lowe, Carlo Corbellini, and Davey Vorhes, and appeared in an episode of Key & Peele. She also became a member of the sketch and musical comedy troupe Story Pirates, performing sketches derived from stories written by children.

During her time in Los Angeles, Ruffin joined Sacred Fools Theater Company, where she co-wrote and performed in King of Kong: A Musical Parody, a two-woman show created with co-star Lauren Van Kurin. The musical, directed by Brendan Hunt and featuring music by David Schmoll, parodied the documentary The King of Kong. The production appeared at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival, where it won Best Overall Musical, and at the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it received awards for Best Musical and Outstanding Songwriting. The show returned to Sacred Fools in September 2016 for a performance attended by parody subject Billy Mitchell.

In 2014, following an unsuccessful audition for Saturday Night Live alongside Tiffany Haddish, Leslie Jones, Gabrielle Dennis, Nicole Byer, Simone Shepherd, and Bresha Webb, Ruffin received a call from Seth Meyers inviting her to join his new late-night program as a writer. She has written for Late Night with Seth Meyers since the show launched in 2014, becoming the first Black woman to write for a late-night network talk show in the United States. In addition to her writing duties, she appears in recurring segments including "Amber Says What?," "Amber's Minute of Fury," "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" with Jenny Hagel, and "Point, Counterpoint." Meyers also featured Ruffin as a guest for the show's 1,000th episode. She received a Writers Guild of America award nomination in the category of Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) Series in 2017, and hosted the 70th Writers Guild of America Awards ceremony in February 2018.

Beyond Late Night, Ruffin wrote for the Comedy Central series Detroiters and served as a regular narrator on Comedy Central's Drunk History. In 2017, she developed a single-camera comedy series titled Going Dutch, which was not ordered to series. In 2019, NBC ordered a pilot presentation for her single-camera comedy Village Gazette, and that same year she wrote for the first season of A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO. Her late-night talk show, The Amber Ruffin Show, premiered on Peacock on September 25, 2020, and ran through 2022. The program departed from conventional late-night formats by omitting guests and centering on topical sketches. It earned a Writers Guild of America nomination in the Comedy/Variety Sketch Series category in 2021 and a nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2022, Ruffin and Hagel co-founded the production company Straight to Cards under an overall deal with Universal Television.

Ruffin's Broadway career includes appearances in Freestyle Love Supreme and Some Like It Hot, with her Broadway activity spanning 2019 to 2021. She co-wrote the book for the Broadway musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot alongside Matthew Lopez, a project announced in February 2021. The show earned Ruffin a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical in 2023. In 2026, the Off-Broadway production of Bigfoot! The Musical began previews on February 11 at New York City Center, featuring lyrics by Ruffin, music by David Schmoll, and a book by Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta.

Ruffin co-authored two books with her sister Lacey Lamar. The first, You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, was published on January 12, 2021, and reached the New York Times Best Seller list in the Hardcover Nonfiction category. Their second collaboration, The World Record Book of Racist Stories, was published in November 2022. In September 2022, Ruffin was announced as the voice of Purple, a new M&M's spokescandy character.

In February 2025, the White House Correspondents' Association announced Ruffin as the featured entertainment for its April 26 dinner. On March 29, WHCA board president Eugene Daniels announced the cancellation of her appearance, citing a desire to keep the focus away from political division. White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich described the cancellation as a "cop-out" and characterized Ruffin as "hate-filled." Ruffin responded to the cancellation publicly.

Ruffin was married to Dutch artist Jan Schiltmeijer from 2010 until their divorce in 2023. On the final day of Pride Month in 2024, she came out as queer on Instagram. She was named to Crain's New York Business 40 Under 40 list in 2018 and to Time100 Next in 2021.