“Baby, do you need a margarita?” is the first question Amber Ruffin, host of her eponymous Peacock late night talk show, asks when I meet her after a taping of. The backstage area designated for Ruffin and her writers at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is already a party room at 3 P.M. Ruffin is ready to unwind.Late Night With Seth Meyers, welcomed me into the room, margarita in hand, and dove right in, discussing the state of the world and her inspiration for commenting on the news.
They told me I was doing the show and asked what I wanted to look like, and I said, “Kurt Hummel fromOnce, outside of work—and this is true—I was standing and I had a cup of coffee that I had drank and a cigarette in my hand, and someone put money in my cup of coffee. That is what I normally look like, like Eddie Murphy in. From the outside, I would say it’s slightly androgynous, but from the inside, I would say just the comfy cutest. It’s too much to wear a fashion-y dress.
You’ve wrapped two seasons of the show. What do you want people to take away from an episode when they’ve finished watching? I want them to feel a little more comfortable in their skin. The fire behind the show was that period of time when the news wouldn't call racist stuff “racist.” And then I became fully insane. I just thought, if just one human being would go on TV and call shit “shit,” we wouldn't have to feel like this. And like every Black woman in America, I said,I open up my Apple news app and I read the news. Then I get out of bed unless I don't have to work that day.