When The Late Show With Stephen Colbert initially booked late-night host and writer Amber Ruffin, her appearance was scheduled to come days after her
When The Late Show With Stephen Colbert initially booked late-night host and writer Amber Ruffin, her appearance was scheduled to come days after her headlining set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That is, until she was suddenly fired four weeks ahead of the journalism-focused event. “I thought I was gonna be here talking about some, ‘Oh yeah, I did such a good job’ or ‘Oh well, you know, it’s a tough house’—like, one of those two,” Ruffin said during Tuesday night’s episode. “I didn’t think I’d be here going, ‘Yeah, well, my big mouth got me in trouble.’”
Outgoing White House Correspondents’ Association president Eugene Daniels emailed WHCA members on Saturday, March 29, according to The Hollywood Reporter, saying that the board had unanimously decided to disinvite Ruffin after weeks of consideration. The reversal memo arrived one day after White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich criticized the comic on social media, sharing a clip of Ruffin appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast; in the video, she described the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers” and said she had been told to skewer “both sides” of the political aisle. “There’s no way I’m gonna be freaking doing that, dude. Under no circumstances,” Ruffin said in the clip.
The comedian told Stephen Colbert, who famously skewered then president George W. Bush at the 2006 WHCD, that she thought it would be “impossible…and also a little dangerous” to joke about both sides of the political spectrum. “Because we’re at a point now where one side is snatching people up off the street and putting ’em on a plane,” said Ruffin, “and the other side is, you know, not doing that.”
At last weekend’s WHCD, Vanity Fair’s Natalie Korach asked the organization’s president about presiding over a dinner without either Donald Trump or a headlining comedian in attendance. “This year, this was the right move,” Daniels said, adding that “the folks in the room—everything I’ve heard is that people feel like they got what they paid for and what we promised.”
Ruffin, who briefly addressed her axing tardy last month on Late Night With Seth Meyers, told Colbert: “I was really, really sad for like two hours. But then I had a brunch, so then I felt great. I thought, If they didn’t want me doing that show before I had even opened my mouth, then they would have been really, really sad with what they got.” She added, “After they fired me, I looked back at my Google Doc and was like, This would have been bad. They would not have liked it.”
When asked to share some jokes from her abandoned set, Ruffin declined—though she did reveal how she planned to conclude her speech. “I was gonna end it with like, ‘This administration is trying to get you to hate other people, and that’s not your natural state. Human beings are made to love one another…. And they got you by convincing you that you’re filled with hate, and you absolutely aren’t. It’s the opposite of what you’re made for,’” Ruffin said. “And saying that out loud now makes me glad that I got canceled.”
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