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Amber Ruffin previews the book for Broadway musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot

Amber Ruffin previews the book for Broadway musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot

Nobody's perfect, but that won't stop Amber Ruffin from trying when it comes to writing a musical.

The comedian, writer, and host of The Amber Ruffin Show is delving into a new world — that of Broadway, as the co-writer of a new Some Like It Hot musical alongside Tony winning playwright Matthew Lopez (The Inheritance).

Casual fans might not know that this isn't the first musical Ruffin has written. She co-wrote (and starred in) a musical parody of documentary The King of Kong for Los Angeles' Sacred Fools Theater Company. King of Kong: A Musical Parody went on to win Best Musical at both the 2014 New York International Film Festival and 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival. But this is Ruffin's first time in the Broadway big leagues.

"I love writing musicals," she tells EW. "I always have, ever since I realized I was allowed to. When you don't work in this field, especially once you get to my age, you think, 'Oh, well, I couldn't possibly do that.' But it takes so long to realize that there aren't any rules. You can do whatever you want. No one's keeping track of you."

Some Like It Hot, a new musical adaptation of the beloved 1959 Billy Wilder film, was already in development when Ruffin was brought on to co-write the book, which transforms the film's script to include a diverse cast of characters, including numerous Black actors in leading roles. Most notably, Sugar Kane, the role originated by Marilyn Monroe, was re-written specifically as a Black woman.

Amber Ruffin, Some Like It Hot musical Social crop
Amber Ruffin, Some Like It Hot musical Social crop

Amber Ruffin and 'Some Like It Hot'

Because of her joining the writing process a bit later in development, much of the Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman score was already composed when Ruffin signed on.

"We all know the story," she says. "And they had ideas of, This moment would be beautiful as a song or There's time here for a song about XYZ. Having watched the show 50 million times, I still get excited before each of the numbers. Marc and Scott truly outdid themselves. They sent me a video of their first run through, and I watched it and spent the rest of the day singing two of the songs. Later on in the week, I was singing two different songs. That's how f---ing earwormy this show is. The worst thing that could happen to you at a musical is that the musical is over and cannot sing any of the songs you just heard."

She wouldn't call herself a fan of the original film, but she was aware of it and its place in cinema history — and aspects of it infused her writing. Sugar Kane is here played by Adrianna Hicks (Six), just one of the actors of color shifting the story from its very white origins. Still, original star Marilyn Monroe was heavy on Ruffin's mind while writing.

"As I was writing Sugar, I was thinking, This is who this woman would have to be to do this at this time," she says. "The type of human being you would have to be in order to strike out on the road with an all ladies band, in this era, when you're Black, this is who you have to be in order to do that. It just so happened to end up being who I think Marilyn Monroe was in real life. She had to play a sexpot moron a lot, but I don't think that's who she is. She was smart and savvy and fun. And that's who Sugar is."

Ruffin is aware of the potential pitfalls of Some Like It Hot. Other recent Broadway film-to-stage adaptations, such as Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire, have come under fire for their use of cisgender actors in roles that use the idea of a man in a dress as part of their humor. But Ruffin says their approach as writers and comedians nullifies any of that.

"I've heard that concern," she reflects. "It's so funny because if you think Some Like It Hot, you think 'man in a dress' as the basis of all of the jokes, but we don't have any of those. The main giggle point in Some Like It Hot was, 'A man in a dress and isn't that crazy?' But it's not crazy to anyone who helped write the show. So, it just didn't come through in any of our writing."

Ruffin has exclusively shared two pages from the Some Like It Hot script, annotated with her own notes from a rehearsal. Here, she breaks them down for us.

Some Like It Hot stage script
Some Like It Hot stage script

Amber Ruffin

1. The Makings of an Inciting Incident

In these pages, we come in on the play's protagonists, Joe (Christian Borle) and Jerry (J. Harrison Ghee) after the speakeasy they play at has just been raided. The two musicians find themselves thrown out on the street and in need of employment.

Ruffin struggled just which pages to share with us because of her fear of spoilers. "Fankly, I didn't want to give anything away," she says. "So, I was really limited to what I could choose. But it's fun because it establishes the nice feel of the show."

She has predominantly worked in writers' rooms for a litany of television shows, most notable Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Ruffin was delighted to find that process translated to collaborating on a musical. "Matthew Lopez and I spent a lot of time with our interns and assistants and us all typing away," she recounts. "It felt like a writer's room. I do think we were onto something with that. I have to be in a writer's room most of the time. I don't think people who write musicals do that. But I'm here to tell you, they should."

2. Bringing the funny? Check!

The check marks and hearts that litter the page in Ruffin's handwriting are her system for keeping track of laughs and nice moments. "The check marks are laughs," she explains. "It's the best when you write a thing, and then you put it up, and then you sit with your pencil and you check mark all the laughs. Then, you look back and you only look at check marks and you go, 'Oh, okay, this has enough laughs,' or, 'This does not have enough laughs.' You put hearts in, and you're like, 'Okay, this feels nice.' It's a very rudimentary system I've got in place."

3. The Tip Tap Twins

Joe and Jerry are jazz musicians here, as they are in the film, but they might have a wider variety of musical talents according to this piece of dialogue, referencing their old performance duo, "The Tip Tap Twins."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ruffin protests when we ask if this means we'll see Borle and Ghee tap dance. "Maybe they are? I don't know.  Are there tap numbers in this show? Who is to say? Not me. I'm not getting in trouble for saying anything. Technically, you received no response to that question."

Some Like It Hot stage script
Some Like It Hot stage script

Amber Ruffin

4. "Great Call Forward"

Ruffin also underlines a moment of foreshadowing in these pages, her notes reading, "Great Call Forward" when Joe executes a move while saying "Zee Bap Zeh Bootlee Atta Feet." But she's similarly mum. "Oh, well, just maybe that phrase comes back in a very big way," she teases. "Maybe it does. Maybe they never say it again. Who's to say?"

5. "You know they don't hire Black musicians."

Making the world of Some Like It Hot more diverse was a major goal of the entire production team. So much so, that Ruffin already knew what cast she had to play with when she signed on. "I was like, 'Oh, Sugar is Black. And she's a central character to this, and so is Jerry. And they are a central character to this,'" she recounts. "I thought, 'Whoa, that's two of the three main characters that are Black. But then if you pull out and you look at the five main characters, Sweet Sue (Natasha Yvette Williams) is also Black, and Osgood (Kevin Del Aguila), the billionaire, is Latinx. I was like, 'Whoa, whoa, most of the cast is Black? This is fantastic.'"

It feels resonant that this production has led with Black actors, considering it is a tale of the Jazz Age, and jazz was first and foremost a Black art form. But Ruffin isn't here to right a historical wrong or anything. "I certainly wasn't  out to defend jazz or anything," she quips. "La La Land beat that out of me. Thanks to [Ryan Gosling], everybody's doing great."

In fact, she was more concerned with having fun and painting a real, vibrant portrait of Black life. "White people love to see a Black person being like, 'Oh God, the racism,'" she comments. "But [racism is] daily. Who has time to freak out like that? You can always tell when a white person has written something because it's like a Black person laying on the ground talking about, 'Oh, no, I'm so sad and hurt.' It's unrealistic."

6. "A band can't sound white."

Scrawled next to one of the best punchlines in these two pages is Ruffin's note, "Can we get away with this?" in reference to a band sounding white, and her later update, "We did!" Ruffin says she wasn't so much concerned about the content of the joke, as the medium in which it was being conveyed. "I really thought that was more of a TV joke," she explains. "But J's delivery can sell anything. It's dangerous to write for J, and it's dangerous to write for Christian because they'll sell your garbage joke.You'll be like, 'Okay, I did a good job.' But you didn't do a good job. They did a good job. They're two dangerous people to write for because they'll get you your laughs. They got me in some real bad habits."

7. Hey, Minnie, you're so fine

The musical will also introduce new characters, including Minnie, right hand to bandleader Sweet Sue and member of the band herself. Ruffin proudly declares her a new addition to the storytelling.

And don't expect this to be a one-and-done for Ruffin on Broadway. When we ask if she'd want to write another musical, she coyly replies, "Maybe I'm working on one already. Maybe it's also an old movie turned musical. Who's to say?"

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