Welcome to The Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some rare and retro comedy never before seen on the web.
Late Night with Seth Meyers writer Amber Ruffin currently has a new comedy in development at NBC, and to celebrate, Second City sent us a clip this week from the 2008 revue No County for Old White Men, which featured Ruffin alongside ensemble performers Joe Canale, Ithamar Enriquez, Shelly Grossman, Brad Morris, and Emily Wilson. In the above scene, Wilson plays a girl who asks her grandmother (Ruffin) for some bully and boy-related advice, and Ruffin delivers with some timeless Biblical wisdom: “The Bible says that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice and that boys are made of fire and pee. Now, what that means is that boys are born terrible and then they progressively become terribler and terribler until they die, at which point they generally tend to chill out.â€
Six years later, Gramma made her big TV debut when Ruffin brought the character to Late Night: