Words | Morgan Bernard
Amber Ruffin says she looked “100 percent with child.” She wasn’t pregnant—although strangers would have assumed that—but carrying two grapefruit-sized fibroids, one lodged inside her uterus, causing contractions so painful she’d find herself doubled over, wondering whether she needed the hospital.
Twenty seconds later, she’d be joking again.
For more than a decade, Amber Ruffin, Tony- and Emmy-nominated comedian, actress, and writer, has made a career out of transforming unbearable realities into something audiences can sit with long enough to understand them. First through improv stages in Omaha and Amsterdam, then as the first Black woman writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers, and now as one of America’s sharpest political comedians on the panel of CNN’s Have I Got News for You, Ruffin has perfected a style that turns horror into clarity without softening its edges.
But the closer her comedy has moved toward politics, race, queerness, and women’s bodies, the more personal it has become.
In 2022, she became one of the first comedians to openly discuss uterine fibroids, a condition that eight out of ten Black women will develop by the age of fifty, speaking candidly about her experience both in the media and online.
On politics, health & being believed.
In her typical absurd yet disarming tone, she gets real with me during our interview. “I just thought it was crazy. I mean, I looked five months pregnant because I had two grapefruit-sized fibroids.” Every month when she had her period, she’d suffer painful contractions. She describes the experience in classic Amber Ruffin fashion, detailing the “off-the-charts pain” while peppering in jokes about the fact that “it got to the point where the fibroids were pressing on [her] everything, and [she] couldn’t poop.”
I would’ve never thought that I would talk about political anything. But then they murdered George Floyd, and I went fully bonkers and have never returned.
When Ruffin arrived in New York to work at Late Night, she finally had decent insurance and the opportunity to choose a gynecologist she wanted based on her own research, not just who was in-network. As a queer woman with no desire for children, Ruffin told me she immediately asked her doctor, “‘Can I just have a hysterectomy?’ And the doctor was like, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ But four or five years later, she was like, ‘I have some great news. You’re eligible for a hysterectomy.’” Ruffin laughs and confesses, “That’s probably the only time she got to deliver that news to someone who was over the moon about it.”
Once you see George Floyd being murdered, you’re either an activist or you’re complicit and that’s it.
For women who want children, there’s not always a clear solution for fibroid symptoms. Treatment starts with identifying the problem, which, despite being extremely common, is often normalized or dismissed. Ruffin realized just how widespread the condition was when, as she puts it, “I told all my little friends, every one of those motherfuckers was like, me, too. I was like, oh, wow, everyone’s just been doing this, and no one said anything.”
Realize that you have a powerful voice.
Getting a correct diagnosis comes down to finding a doctor whom you trust and who believes you, which isn’t always easy, especially as a Black woman, Ruffin tells me. On The Amber Ruffin Show, Ruffin covered race correction in medicine during the height of the pandemic, a concept that directly affects how patients seeking care for fibroids are often treated. Because many of the signs of uterine fibroids can be confused with severe menstrual symptoms, doctors are often skeptical of their patients’ complaints of pain. Ruffin had her own doubts about her symptoms, sharing that “When I found out that your period shouldn’t be horrible, horrible pain, I was floored. ‘Cause I don’t know anyone whose period isn’t torture.”
I think comedy does a great job of making things digestible because shit is scary.
This phenomenon is amplified for Black women, who often face a no-win situation in medical settings. Ruffin describes the grim scenario: “If you go in there and you’re shrieking, then you’re drug seeking. But if you go in there and you’re calm about the amount of pain you’re in, then you’re not in any pain at all.”
This is compounded by the fact that, as Ruffin explains, “Socially, as a Black person, I’m not going to be squealing out in pain. That’s just not how we’re conditioned because [as a Black woman] you can squeal out in pain all you want, don’t nobody give a shit.”
As sharp observers of culture and often its boldest critics, comedians have filled the informational vacuum left by traditional news.
Ruffin was lucky to find a gynecologist who understood her symptoms and believed her pain, but not everyone has the luxury of picking their doctor. Many women are limited by their location, insurance coverage, or the time they can afford to take off in order to keep searching for the right physician. Ruffin describes the seemingly endless process of having her symptoms dismissed during appointments: “I get to the doctor, and I’m wondering, are they going to listen to me? Are they gonna cut me off? And sometimes you go in there, and the guy’s like, ugh. And you know that this was a waste of your time and you’re gonna have to go see another doctor behind this guy.”
The experience is one many women are painfully familiar with, and one Ruffin has tried to avoid whenever possible by choosing women doctors.
Amber uses her voice to name what feels wrong.
Long before she had language for systems like medical racism, Ruffin had already developed a habit of naming what felt wrong through humor.
In fact, the first time Ruffin realized she was funny came while defending someone else. She remembers being around five or six years old, standing with her sisters while a group of older high school boys started ragging on each other, and on her sisters.
That may be her real gift: not making difficult subjects lighter, but making them impossible to look away from. And maybe that’s why her discussions of uterine fibroids feel just as politically sharp as her monologues about the news cycle.
“One kid was really getting it in,” she recalls. “And he looked exactly like Johnny Gill, the guy who sings ‘Rub You the Right Way.’ So I said, ‘Guys, let’s go, because this guy [she sings] rubs me the wrong way.’”
The boys burst out laughing.
“I remember that moment burning into my kid brain,” she says. “Thinking: leave my sister alone. And also… I might be good at this.”
For better or worse, much of the world’s population looks to alternative news sources to better understand what’s going on in the world.
That instinct—using humor to disrupt cruelty, diffuse tension, and protect people—still sits at the center of her comedy decades later.
Ruffin’s sense of humor was shaped early, growing up in Omaha as the youngest of five sisters in a city that, as a Black person, often left her feeling culturally isolated. “There were all these ethnicities that I didn’t even know existed until I was like twelve,” she says. “I remember being at the mall and being like, this person is not Black. This person is not White. I didn’t know what was happening.”
Ruffin is more than a comedian. She’s more than an activist. And she’s got our attention because sometimes it’s easier to laugh than cry.
Years later, she still jokes about the city with equal parts affection and disbelief. “Why would anyone dare come to the center of this country?” she laughs. “I mean, the edges are bad enough.”
Leaving Omaha changed her life. First Chicago, then Amsterdam, then New York, each move widening both her world and her understanding of what comedy could do. She never planned to become a comedian; she wasn’t following a master plan to her dream career. “Like, I don’t know that I was making the right choices,” she tells me. “But I was making the funnest ones.”
Share your story when you are ready.
After getting involved in improv, her path took her to sketch comedy and from there, “the frickin’ medium just kept changing,” she tells me. “I had to figure out how to write for late night, then I had to figure out how to write for sitcoms… Then, when I wrote musicals for fun while I lived in LA. And it didn’t matter if they were good or not. They were a fun thing my friends and I were doing.”
The closer her comedy has moved toward politics, race, queerness, and women’s bodies, the more personal it has become.
Through her work across the industry, she’s learned that “your writing is always valid. There’s always something of note inside of it, especially when you’re writing like a silly madman with no rules.” That lawless approach, she says, is what gives her work its staying power: “it’s more timeless… because it’s so rowdy and raggedy.”
But in 2020, the world intruded on that freedom and free-flowing creative process in a way she could not ignore.
Marginalized people must be heard.
“I would’ve never thought that I would talk about political anything. But then they murdered George Floyd, and I went fully bonkers and have never returned. It cracked open the world for me, and I just couldn’t go back.” For most of the country, 2020 represents a seismic shift in our culture. It’s a concrete point in time that we, as a society, can point to and say this was when the world changed. For Amber Ruffin and so many others, that point in time was May 25, 2020. “I think we all just grew up… in those 8 minutes and 42 seconds, we all grew up really fast.”
Suddenly, Ruffin had no choice about what to write about, no choice about using her voice to drive change. “Once you see George Floyd being murdered, you’re either an activist or you’re complicit, and that’s it.”
And she found herself perfectly situated to speak up. Because, let’s face it: modern media is broken. It’s partisan, highly susceptible to corporate influence, and constantly discredited by politicians seeking to label criticism as misinformation. For better or worse, much of the world’s population looks to alternative news sources to better understand what’s going on in the world.
I’m just a human being with eyes, and people are being crushed, and I have to say something so that my humanity stays intact.
As sharp observers of culture and often its boldest critics, comedians have filled the informational vacuum left by traditional news. “I think comedy does a great job of making things digestible because shit is scary,” Ruffin says. “Once you say what’s happening out loud. Once you say, ok, they’re banning abortion, then it hits you. Then you discuss it with people, and you make observations about it, and nine times out of ten, those observations are gonna be funny because tragedy usually becomes funny after a minute.”
Your writing is always valid. There’s always something of note inside of it, especially when you’re writing like a silly madman with no rules.
Ruffin’s vocal presence eventually landed her a spot on CNN’s Have I Got News for You, where she teams up with Roy Wood Jr. and Michael Ian Black to take on the week’s news. When I asked how she sees her evolving role, she paused before answering: “I think I might have to say [I’m] an activist… I think it’s just what the world became that made us. I don’t think I’m supposed to be an activist. That’s not in my bones. It’s not inherent in me. I’m just a human being with eyes, and people are being crushed, and I have to say something so that my humanity stays intact.”
Humor, for Ruffin, has always been one of the sharpest ways to process and communicate that reality. In 2014, she developed the musical Bigfoot! with friends, initially “for fun.” The premise centered on “a perpetually drunk mayor [who] has used Bigfoot as a scapegoat so that all of the townspeople are distracted as he steals all their money.” The show was performed in a few theatres in 2014, but, given the shifting political climate, Ruffin and her co-authors eventually decided to bring it to life “for real.” It found a home Off-Broadway in New York in February 2025, becoming an unlikely critical success and earning Ruffin nominations for three Drama League Awards.
If you don’t use your voice, they will.
Her refusal to detach herself from what’s happening politically has occasionally come with consequences. In February 2025, Ruffin was announced as the featured entertainer for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A month later, the White House Correspondents’ Association canceled her appearance, stating that it wanted the evening’s focus to remain on journalism rather than “the politics of division.” Ruffin responded the only way she knows how: by making the absurdity impossible to ignore.
Appearing later on Late Night with Seth Meyers, she joked, “I thought when people take away your rights, erase your history, and deport your friends, you’re supposed to call it out. But I was wrong.”
The joke landed because, underneath it, there was almost no joke at all.
That tension—between humor and devastation, absurdity and sincerity—is what makes Ruffin such a singular figure in American comedy right now. She is not interested in neutrality, but she’s also not interested in sanctimony. Even at her most political, her work retains the looseness and irreverence of somebody who still fundamentally sees comedy as play.
And maybe that’s why her discussions of uterine fibroids feel just as politically sharp as her monologues about the news cycle. In both cases, she’s forcing people to confront realities they’ve been trained to minimize: racist medical systems, reproductive expectations placed on women’s bodies, the normalization of chronic pain, and the expectation that suffering should remain private and polite.
Ruffin still talks about fibroids the same way she talks about politics: plainly, graphically, and with enough humor to keep people listening through the discomfort. That may be her real gift: not making difficult subjects lighter, but making them impossible to look away from.
Ruffin is more than a comedian. She’s more than an activist. And she’s got our attention because sometimes it’s easier to laugh than cry.
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