Amber Ruffin
Amber Ruffin brings her impressive comedic chops to "The Wiz."
At this point, “The Wizard of Oz,” L. Frank Baum’s fantastical morality tale with witches, wizards, and Kansas tornados, is as canonical as the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales or “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Mention ruby slippers and (almost) everyone catches the reference.
Naturally, it’s a story that’s had its fair share of renditions, retellings, and prequels, be it on film, stage, spoofs, or the Muppets (the 1939 Judy Garland film, “Wicked,” etc., etc.). And one of the most prominent of these was the 1974 musical, “The Wiz,” a reimagining of the story through a contemporary Black American lens and soundtracked with Motown and soul music.
The musical went on to become a critically panned but culturally iconic movie starring Diana Ross and the late Michael Jackson in 1978, and Broadway revivals came in 1984 and 2024. This latest version, which is currently performing at Bass Performance Hall through Sunday, includes more contemporary — and even timeless — cultural references and new interpretations of “Ease on Down the Road,” “Home,” and “Brand New Day.”
The new snappy — and quite hilarious — dialogue is courtesy of Amber Ruffin, a late-night talk show writer by trade whose impressive resume includes writing for Comedy Central’s “Detroiters,” “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” an Emmy Awards ceremony, two Golden Globe ceremonies, and the 2021 Broadway revival of “Some Like It Hot.” She even had her own talk show, “The Amber Ruffin Show,” which streamed on Peacock from 2020 to 2022.
With the musical coming to town, we got a chance to chat with Ruffin about her initial intro to “The Wiz” movie, her upbringing in Omaha, and why you won’t find any “police mice” in this brilliant revival.
Fort Worth Magazine: Can’t help but notice what an incredibly successful and diverse career in writing you’ve had thus far. You've written for talk shows, award shows, sketch shows — just about everything across the board. And now you’re on your second musical. What makes this style of writing different from the rest?
Amber Ruffin: My everyday real full-time job is writing late night comedy. So, when writing musicals, there's almost no overlap in your brain; I have all this room for writing songs and writing a story and fleshing out characters because you don’t get to do any of that in late night. So, every non-occupied nook in my brain fits exactly what you need for musicals.
FW: What about the individual shows themselves? I know you worked on the “Some Like It Hot” revival, how was that different from working on “The Wiz”?
Ruffin: They are similar in that they're both stories that already exist. The difference is that, with “Some Like It Hot,” I was writing with Matthew Lopez, and we would sit together and have a blast. With “The Wiz,” I was writing alone. But the rest of the team (a team Ruffin called “an all-star cast of Black creative artists”) was very present. So, in that way it kind of felt like I was writing with more people. It was a really good time.
FW: So, tell me a little about your personal history with “The Wiz.” I’ll admit the Michael Jackson/Diana Ross movie was my introduction to it. What was yours?
Ruffin: It was also seeing the movie. I have no idea what your age is, but I never lived in a world where “The Wiz” didn’t exist. It was ever present. So, the first version I saw was the movie version, and then I saw it on stage. I never got to see the Broadway version or the US Tour, and I don’t think they ever recorded the tour. So, you had to just hear a lot of stories from people who had seen the “The Wiz,” and it really did fill in a lot of gaps for me. But that’s why I like our version of “The Wiz.” We understand a lot of people have never seen the stage version, not even local or high school productions of it. A lot of people only know the movie. So, we made sure to honor both of them with our production, and I think we did a good job of marrying the two.
FW: So, outside of paying homage to the movie version, how else is this stage production different from the original?
Ruffin: The movie and original Broadway production were very much anchored to the seventies. What I wanted was for us to have a version of “The Wiz” that you could do today and you could pick it up and do it 30 years from now, and it would still feel fine. We use a teeny bit of slang, but the slang we use is slang that has stood the test of time.
And we made sure to put a lot of old Black grandma saying in there. At one point, I was like, ‘Well, we have to keep a little bit of our mother slang alive. I didn’t want to date it, but if you could picture [the words] coming out of a cute little grandma’s mouth, I think it’s fine. And I think it’s something we should keep.
FW: Considering recent musicals and films that take place in the Oz universe, I wonder if things like “Wicked,” which evokes a lot of sympathy for the eventual Wicked Witch of the West, is having an influence on subsequent tellings of “The Wizard of Oz” story.
Ruffin: That's certainly possible. I think that’s why I love “The Wiz” so much. It is based on “The Wizard of Oz,” but it really took the turns it needed to take to be its own thing, and I really appreciate that. Whereas “Wicked” really serves the “Wizard of Oz,” I don't think “The Wiz” does. I think “The Wiz” took it as a lovely jumping off point and then kind of found itself.
FW: Perhaps this is purely anecdotal and not entirely true, but I feel like there have been a lot of great revivals on Broadway in recent years. Like it’s a phase. Why do you feel it’s important to revive these older musicals and give the younger generation a little taste of it?
Ruffin: I think the good thing that happens with revivals is a lot of problematic stuff gets cut out. And I got to tell you, that's my favorite fricking part. Then you can watch this [version of] “The Wiz” with your grandpa, and he can be like, “Where are the police mice?” And you can be like, “No one wants to see a bunch of Black men get snatched up by the police today. We're here to have fun.”
Certainly, in 20 years, people will be like, “You can't make a lion talk like that” or who knows what the next thing will be? But if we can get grandpa and grandbaby on the same page and give them something they can all enjoy, that’s the goal. Because how many times have you been talking to one of the oldest people on Earth, and they're like, “You know what I like is the most problematic thing you've ever heard of”? And you have to be like, “I don't want to see that. And you shouldn't have ever liked it. It's trash.”
FW: I interviewed Shane McAnally a couple months [one of the writers of "Shucked," which will be at Bass Performance Hall later this month], and I asked him about experiencing the Broadway opening of his show. Now, this is someone who has had 50 Billboard-topping country songs to his name, and he said it was like experiencing all 50 of those No.1 hits at once. He saw it as the pinnacle of his career to this point. Now, similar to Shane, you're also an extremely successful writer outside of Broadway. I want to know if you had a similar experience when you first saw "The Wiz" revival on Broadway?
Ruffin: It is weird to write jokes and then have Broadway professionals say them. It's bananas because I did quite a bit of theater at the beginning, but it was never theaters that are this size. I mean, rarely the size of a Broadway theater; it was just me and my little doofus friends. So, to have a real professional slaying your jokes to hundreds and hundreds of people at once is very, very exciting.
FW: And I know that you’re from Omaha [Nebraska]. Certainly a long way from both coasts. How has that affected your writing? Is it still an influence?
Ruffin: I would imagine it does. I don't know. I guess it broke both ways. Initially, I was like, well, this is how you appeal to the masses, which is your only move in Omaha, Nebraska. And then you end up writing for something like “The Wiz” and you just go, “Screw it. I'm going to do exactly what I think this show needs, and it will be entirely through the Black lens, and if we leave people behind, so be it.” We'll just make sure that it is in every way exactly what was in our hearts. And I think that's what comes through.
If you're interested in purchasing tickets for one of the remaining shows, visit basshall.com
