Amber Ruffin Confirms Cancellation Of “The Amber Ruffin Show” At SF Sketchfest

When The Amber Ruffin Show premiered on Peacock, it had a lot of momentum going for it. In a world of late night that was predominantly made up with white men, Amber Ruffin was finding her own voice. She had already been a breakout on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The show was met positively with critics and audiences, and had two official seasons on the air.

This weekend, Ruffin took the stage at SF Sketchfest in San Francisco alongside fellow comedian Zainab Johnson. During an hour and a half conversation, Ruffin kicked things off by revealing to the crowd of fans that the show had been officially over for a while now. While we previously heard that the show would only be back on “special occasions,” Ruffin all but confirmed the unfortunate news.

The way in which Ruffin found out that the show was canceled was a bit unusual. Once the show wasn’t invited to participate in the NBC upfronts where they’d be talking about the fall schedule, she figured the writing was on the wall. She wound up at the upfronts anyway, she encountered what she described as a “drunk NBC executive.” The executive told her at the party that he was “so sorry about your show.”

This was the first Ruffin had officially heard about the show not returning. Obviously that’s not how you’d want to find out about losing your job. But Ruffin was able to convince the streaming network to let them come back for 6 more episodes, which they agreed to ultimately before officially pulling the plug. 

One thing that did bother Ruffin more, however, was when her pilot she did for NBC wasn’t picked up. The pilot - Non-Evil Twin - found Ruffin playing dual roles as her twin sister who is forced to run a Fortune 500 company. This devastated Ruffin - as she figured they had a great chance to get picked up - more than the cancellation of her talk show did.

But Ruffin spent a lot of time shedding light on the positive things she’s had going on. She wrote a brand-new adaptation recently of The Wiz, which opens in San Francisco soon. She spent the majority of the discussion talking not so much about what didn’t go right, but talking about the things that did, and sharing her own unique view of the world and success with the crowd. 

We certainly expect to only see more amazing things from Ruffin in the future! And we hope to one day see that pilot that she did for NBC, as it sounds amazing.