Amber Ruffin


Amber Mildred Ruffin is an American comedian, writer, and actor. She has been a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers since 2014. When she joined the show, she became the first black woman to write for a late-night network talk show in the United States.

Early life and education

Ruffin was born in Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1996, Ruffin graduated from Benson High School.

Career

In 2001, Ruffin began performing in local theater productions and improv in Omaha. She moved to Chicago where she studied improv at the iO Theater.
In 2008, Ruffin moved to Amsterdam to work as a writer and performer on the improv comedy troupe Boom Chicago Amsterdam.
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, where she joined the YouTube comedy group RobotDown featuring Jessica Lowe, Carlo Corbellini, and Davey Vorhes.
Ruffin appeared on an episode of Key & Peele.
In 2014, Ruffin auditioned for a part on Saturday Night Live.
She was hired by Seth Meyers to write for Late Night with Seth Meyers. In addition to writing, Ruffin also appears in several recurring segments of the program: "Amber Says What?", "Amber's Minute of Fury", "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" and "Point, Counterpoint".
In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, Ruffin opened a week's worth of shows by relating her experiences during encounters with police officers. Meyers also interviewed Ruffin as a guest for the show's 1,000th episode.
In addition to Late Night, Ruffin writes on the Comedy Central show Detroiters and is a regular narrator on another Comedy Central show, Drunk History.
In 2017, Ruffin developed a single-camera comedy show Going Dutch, but the series was not ordered. Also in 2017, she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award in the category "Comedy/Variety Series".
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 2019, Ruffin was a writer for the first season of A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO.

Personal life

In 2010, Ruffin married Jan Schiltmeijer, a native of the Netherlands. The couple met when Ruffin was working in Amsterdam with Boom Chicago.

Filmography