Behind the Scenes of Amber Ruffin’s First Taping With a Live Studio Audience
After launching a late-night show during the Covid-19 pandemic and shooting 30 episodes in a room of empty seats, comedian Amber Ruffin welcomed the first live audience to her weekly sketch and variety show, Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show, on Friday, August 13th.
“It was very exciting,” she says. “Doing this show without an audience meant that we never knew if anyone was ever watching. And then to get out there and see, well shit, it’s at least 150 people. It’s nice. And strange, very strange.”
Now that she has fans — vaxxed and masked — in the studio, nothing feels impossible. “Whatever I say we’re not going to do, we end up doing,” she says. “I would have said we’re not going to be doing songs all the time, we’re never going to have a single puppet, we’re never going to have an audience, so now I just have no idea. I know for a fact that I do not know what’s going to happen, but I certainly like where we are.”
Here’s how you can stream the entire program on NBC’s Peacock.
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In the Makeup Chair
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Amber Ruffin gets her makeup done at NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, as the first live studio audience for her show arrives. She and her announcer and friend Tarik Davis get ready separately because of Covid-19 protocols.
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Bow-Tie
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE “Nicolle Allen [in wardrobe] puts together all my bows,” Ruffin says of her signature bow-tie accessory. “She has all of these ribbons and sparkly doodads, and she will just invent these really pretty bows that just fall out of her brain. It’s very cute.”
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Blazer
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE For each taping, Ruffin wears a unique tailored blazer. “Our costume designer Eric Justian came to me and was like, ‘How do you want to dress for the show?'” Ruffin says. “I said, ‘I want to dress a touch fancier than all the guys dress for their late-night shows. And I like bows.’ That’s all I said to this man, and it was off to the races.”
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‘Home’ Studio
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Studio 8G, where The Amber Ruffin Show films, is the same place Ruffin works as a writer and performer on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “It feels like I’m at home, with all the same people, in the same place. It’s pretty nice,” she says.
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Dance Party
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Before going on stage, Ruffin and her crew have a 10-minute dance party in the green room. “My assistant Justin will turn on very loud, very black music, and we will just dance and sing pretty hard,” she says. “If you notice, at the beginning of every show, we’re always a teensy bit out of breath and a touch dewy, and it’s because we have just been tearing it up backstage for probably four songs straight.”
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Duets
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Davis often joins Ruffin for duets. On the night of their first live audience, they played a musical improvisation game together, recalling their time working together for the Amsterdam-based Boom Chicago improv troupe. “Tarik and I improvised songs together for years and years,” Ruffin says.
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Fandom
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE “When you see all those people, then you realize that all those people got dressed and left the house to come here and have a look,” Ruffin says. “And that’s quite something, because I’m not leaving the house for nothing.”
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Jokes
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Earlier in the season, Ruffin joked in interviews that maybe it was better not to have an audience so she could imagine every joke killing. “When there was silence after jokes, I really did automatically fill it with laughter and cheers,” she says.
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Cheers!
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE A swell of (real, not imagined) cheers and applause greeted Ruffin when she walked onstage. “I did get a little teary-eyed,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it. It just wasn’t really real until people were there, like we were just kind of dicking around in private, and then — who knew a bunch of people would show up?”
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Ready for Renewal
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Ruffin is the latest in a short line of black women to host late night shows, including Whoopi Goldberg in the Nineties and Wanda Sykes in 2009, both of whose shows lasted just one season each. Ruffin’s first season concludes in September, with a renewal announcement yet to come.
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Black Women Writers
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Several years ago, Ruffin was part of a group text with every other black woman writing for late-night shows. “I think it was like, 10 of us,” she says. “We all went to go eat dinner, and it was a little sad to be like, ‘This is everyone!’ And then, ‘Aww this is everyone?’ But now, we’d certainly need a bigger table than just a 10-seater.”
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On Set
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Fans have responded to Ruffin representing black women in comedy. “The best part is when an aspiring black comic says, ‘I didn’t think I could get a show and I didn’t think there was anything for me in comedy, but I saw your show and I think maybe there is,'” she says. “Which is great, except when they’re like, ‘Now I want to do a sketch show.’ I’m like, there’s not a lot of appetite for that; maybe shoot for something else. But you know, shame on me, because that’s what people told me.”
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Bonnet Sonnet
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Ruffin sings a song with a puppet incarnation of the satin bonnet she wears to sleep at night. “There was like, internet discourse about whether or not black women should be out in public in our bonnets,” she says. “People were mad that black women would dare show up to the grocery store in a bonnet. I mean, people are crazy. It’s a grocery store. What do you think this is, the 1950s? So I decided to sing to the bonnet.”
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Song and Dance
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE In frequent musical numbers, Ruffin breaks into song and dance about white supremacists facing consequences, for example, or how boring Joe Biden is. “I never thought we’d be singing this many songs,” she says. “I thought people would be like, ‘I like the show, but I wish she would stop singing.’ I’m not saying no one has said that, but not enough.”
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Margarita Hour
Image Credit: VICTOR LLORENTE FOR ROLLING STONE Ruffin typically concludes her show with a margarita in hand. “I’m going to have a margarita at the end of this show every Friday whether you see me drinking one or not,” she says. “So I thought, how funny to put it at the end of the show, and be like ‘Goodnight everybody!’ while I’m slurping a Margarita. But it works just fine, even though it’s something I only put in there so that I can have a margarita.’
