Lilly Singh and Amber Ruffin gleefully squash the media's made-up beef between them
Aux Features Amber Ruffin
A little while ago, NBC navigated the still-uncharted hinterlands between streaming and network programming by airing new episodes of Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show in the Friday rerun slot of NBC’s A Little Late With Lilly Singh. With the two sole woman late-night hosts of color temporarily sharing the a time slot, predictably, certain media types (although not the A.V. Club) positioned that crossover event as a cutthroat competition, because there can only be one female late-night host, right? (Conventional wisdom: woman hosts are like Highlanders, and everybody knows that.)
Except, as Singh noted when welcoming Ruffin to her show on Wednesday, that’s just some more sexist bullshit from an entertainment landscape dotted with it. “I want to have some real sister talk,” noted Singh to the recently renewed Ruffin, who did a little dance in anticipation. (And while we only saw Amber’s head during the segment, it’s because she was appearing on Singh’s show remotely. Not—to repeat, not—because she is a Highlander.) Calling out the narrative that Ruffin’s new episodes being aired instead of Singh’s repeats represented any sort of beef or competition, Singh recalled her unequivocal support for the idea. Indeed, “Yes! I want to support Amber! I love this! I love it, let’s do it!,” is about as definitive as it gets.
Calling the resulting takes on their supposed feud disheartening, Singh asserted, “I thought this was such a beautiful thing, of two women riding or dying for each other,” to which Ruffin agreed, noting of the rumor-mongering, “I thought that was pretty disappointing.” That said, Ruffin did see a few media takes she described more appropriately as, “Aw, man, I frickin’ love these two idiots!,” something fellow late-night (not white, not male, not named Jimmy) host Singh could only agree was a lot more accurate. Ruffin explained how the lack of an audience in this COVID year has given her freer rein to push the weirdness envelope on her show, commiserating with Singh about the terrifying freedom of finally being the boss.
“I wrote this thing where I’m a dinosaur—make it make sense, byeee!,” Ruffin impersonated her process, prompting an excited Singh to pitch some tag-team goofy bits once in-person tag-teaming is back on the table. Ruffin also noted that, with two more women of color, SNL writer Sam Jay and comedian Ziwe Fumudoh, both prepping their own late-night shows (on HBO and Showtime, respectively), the perennially all white guy domain after the local news is about to change even more. “We support each other, and we’re here to see the collective wins,” stressed Singh, before the pair did a little socially distant tandem victory dance.
28 Comments
Are we sure she’s not a highlander? Because that would be kinda cool.
Not nearly enough katanas, sadly.
Claymores.
Unintuitive accent decisions.
Who? And also: who?
How dare you. Amber is amazing.
this is the new thing on here, people being proud of their pop-cultural ignorance on a pop-culture websiteGoogle her, genius.
Singh I *kinda* get because she made her fame on YouTube. But Amber has been a mainstay on late night TV for a while thanks to Seth Myers. She is very mainstream known.
I was going to say “go back to EW” but Amber Ruffin is reported on by EW, so this guy is just a ____
You can just say “fuckwad,” I don’t really mind.
I just left it blank on purposealso it’s something people keep doing and bothers me, but I don’t feel rly aggressive about it
Please, it’s as old as entertainment news.
It explains who they are in the article. Which is to say, Googling would be a waste of time for this guy, who would not comprehend the results.
“What’s Google? Sounds boring!”“Name something you HAVE heard of”“Salt.”
I’m neither proud nor ashamed of my pop cultural ignorance in this instance. I was just amused at the headline, which seemed to imply that everyone was aware of the supposed feud between someone with a Peacock talk show and the person currently occupying Carson Daly’s old time slot. And here’s a twist: I actually did know who these people were, though I wasn’t aware of the “media’s” sinister machinations to generate a “beef” between them.
Sadly not a new thing on FB–always love when someone takes the time to proudly post that they don’t know someone…
at least there they are on FB and not, like, on a pop-culture website that has written like 20 articles on Amber Ruffin because she is the bee’s knees.Also, if you see the other responses, the OP DOES know who both women are, which makes the posting that much more nonsensical.
This has been the AV Club with your weekly Amber Ruffin update. See you back here next week.
Thank God we have the AV Club to walk us through every detail of a dull late-night sketch. Where would we be without our beloved “news”
Pot? Meet kettle.
kudos to both ladies continued success in the future.
kudos to both ladies continued success in the future.
I don’t know what women you know, but in just about any workplace scenario I can think of, when a woman says “Yes! I want to support Amber! I love this! I love it, let’s do it!,” she actually is saying, “I hate this, I hate her guts, and want her to die with every fiber of my being.”
I don’t work with anyone named Amber sooo….
LOOOOoooove seeing women support other women!!
Genuine question: can anyone point me to examples of this media portrayal of them as enemies? I’m at least medium-tuned in and never heard of any of this. If I google their names + “beef” or “feud,” the only relevant results that come up are this article and the YouTube video embedded in it.
If you’re not clued into to the Battle of the Late Late Late Night Talk Show Hosts you clearly haven’t been paying attention and should be banned from ever commenting on pop culture ever again.
I hope NBC puts Amber on tv Friday again, great way to get more eyes on the show! It would make sense to give her the 12:37 am slot though, since Seth is also a repeat.