Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out? Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians? In our recurring series “Underrated,â€Â we chat with writers and performers from the comedy world about an unsung comedy moment of their choosing that they think deserves more praise.
For a time, it felt as though Los Espookys’ second season would never come. Fred Armisen, Julio Torres, and Ana Fabrega’s bilingual magic-realist show for the cool kids was renewed in July 2019, but the pandemic stalled production, and three whole years passed since we’d last checked in with Renaldo, Úrsula, Andres, and Tati.
Los Espookys is a show about four friends who found a business creating artisanal horror experiences. Fake exorcisms, hauntings, and monster attacks are their stock and trade. But in the world of Los Espookys, real supernatural phenomena bump up against the handcrafted stuff the group creates. It’s a show about horror that is in no way horrific, something Amber Ruffin loves. “I get to be scary adjacent, but it’s not going to scare me. ’Cause I’m a big baby,†she says. “A scary TV show isn’t as scary as a movie. A scary movie will kill a person.â€
As the creator and namesake of Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show, Ruffin brings a specific voice to late-night television. Black-history lessons bump up against musical numbers, and writers play silly characters like a Pennywise-ified Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s a silly, self-aware, and well-dressed show. Ruffin is also bringing all of those skills to co-writing the musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot, due to hit Broadway in November. Ruffin explains the moment she fell in love with Los Espookys, how Kenny Loggins isn’t so different from Babyface, and what you lose as a writer when you water yourself down.
What made you want to talk about Los Espookys?
I love them. It’s such a weird, fun show. I fell in love with it because of Julio Torres’s My Favorite Shapes. Once I saw that, I thought, Oh, I’ll just love this guy forever. Everything he’s in, I’ll watch.
I love everything about it. Even though it is so odd, and there isn’t a single normal thing about the entire show, they don’t spell anything out for you. They fall into this weird job of spooking, and they don’t really explain a lot about it. They’re just like, Here come some spooks. And instantly, you’re like, Yes, I need the spooks. Please give them to me.Â
What did you respond to in My Favorite Shapes?
If I were to just say what it is, you’d be like, “No, that’s dumb and bad, and I do not want to watch it.†But once you see him talk about a shape, you don’t want this conveyor belt to ever stop. I want him to be showing me a million different shapes until we both die. He is such a specific comedian. All of his work is entirely singular. You’ve never seen anything like it, and I love that.
What is your favorite part of Los Espookys? For me, it’s a tie between Tati’s various jobs and the owl with the wig.
I do love Tati. She’s so strange, and that character is always my favorite character in any show. You know, the Phoebe.
That’s so funny — a question I’ve written down is “Is there one Espooky you identify with? Do you think they could become archetypes like the Friends or the Living Single girls?â€
I’m Tati for sure. It’s just the most laughs. Even her face is funny. Her face! Girls don’t get a lot of that. But she has a great comedy face. It’s so nice.
I also love Úrsula because that’s a beautiful character, too. Everything is so thought through. In lots of shows, they write every moment, and each moment gets you to the next moment, and it’s like, Wow, can you believe the journey it took to get here? But this show is like, These are the characters, and then they set them free. The world is so rich, and the characters are so defined. It’s professional comedians at their best.
Ana Fabrega, who plays Tati and co-developed the show, said her character came out fully formed. And very early on, the newsboy cap became part of it.
Yeah.
Have you ever had a character that came from something tactile like a hat?
I think every improviser has played the prop game, and a lot of characters come from that. I used to work at a theater called Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, and that involved a lot of props — but also inventing a character that hosts an improv game. And it comes from you grabbing a wig and a sweater and running onstage and going, “I’m … this guy!â€
I was going to ask you about Boom Chicago because both that and this show are performing comedy for multiple languages. What does that teach you?
At Boom Chicago, we learned how to speak as slowly and as clearly as possible while still getting the tempo of a joke. Everyone who went to Boom Chicago has an excellent grip on the way a joke needs to be structured, the time it should take you to get to the end of your thought and where the break is in the sentence. If you say the joke like a joke, it helps them understand the words — which is nuts but true.
Do you speak Spanish, by the way?
I could almost say I used to speak Spanish. In high school, there were ESL students, but there were no interpreters. So I just started interpreting because no one else could or would. I was taking Spanish, so I was like, Let’s see if I can figure this out. And I mostly did.
Do you feel like any of it is coming back from watching the show?
Absolutely. I just love that they’re not making sure that you’re taken care of because you don’t speak Spanish. They don’t care. They’re living their lives, and if you get there with them? Great. If you don’t? Too fucking bad. I just love that feeling when you get to watch someone create without the added weight of being able to be understood by white America.
It sounds like one thing you’re responding to is that the show doesn’t cater to this alleged universal audience, which always just means straight white guy.
Yeah, it’s great.
Do you try to tailor any of your work to this alleged universal guy, or are you also like, You’ll get it if you get it?
I used to write on A Black Lady Sketch Show. I would turn in sketches, and Robin Thede would be like, “These jokes are through the white lens. You cannot turn in shit like that here — this is Black Lady Sketch Show. Our universe is Black. You’re not explaining anything to anyone.†And I was like, Oh, shit. I had a very hard time figuring out how to write something that wasn’t through the white lens because most of the time you don’t. But when you do, you don’t see it. You don’t even realize you’re doing it because it’s so a part of everything.
People say humor comes from specificity, but writers spend so much time watering themselves down. Sorry, that’s not a question, I’m just realizing in real time how that holds comedy back.
It was so good to have the Ruffin Show because all of a sudden we didn’t have to explain anything. It’s like getting to improvise in an all-Black team. You can just say “Babyface†or you can make an episodic reference to Living Single and everyone can understand what you’re saying. Meanwhile, if you’re improvising with white people and you go to say “Babyface,†you have to go “… Kenny Loggins,†you know what I mean?
Wait.
Do not tell Babyface I compared him to Kenny Loggins.
Are you saying Kenny Loggins is the white Babyface? They’re both named Kenneth, but …
Oh, that’s true! Sorry, too late. I’m doubling down. That’s your headline: “Kenny Loggins Is the White Babyface.â€
I was curious whether the theatricality of the spooks in Los Espookys appeals to you as a theater kid at heart.
That’s true. I never even thought of that, where it’s that specific feeling of “C’mon, you guys, let’s go put on hats and sing a song!†Or “Let’s invite all the neighbor kids to watch us do the play we wrote 15 minutes ago.†I was that kind of kid.
Speaking of theater stuff, how is Some Like It Hot going?
Some Like It Hot is the fucking coolest shit. It’s fun, it’s neat. The music is outstanding. I put that music up against any show I’ve ever seen. It gets in your little bones, and you sing it for days.
Speaking of songs, there’s a lot in The Amber Ruffin Show. How is writing a song different from writing a joke?
I only write comedy songs, so to me they are the exact same thing. For me, writing a comedy song is like writing for a big comedy character because everything has to obey the genre and the structure. A cowboy can’t talk superfast, so the cowboy joke has to be slow and have a bunch of breaks in it. So, because of that, a cowboy’s joke has to have way fewer words. Joke songs are like that. Or it’s a fast song and you have to cram in a bunch of extra words so the jokes can land at the right time.
When you’re creating songs for the show, are you writing the music, or is there a preexisting backing track you’re writing words to?
I start with the melody — usually it’s the fun hook or the buildup to the first joke — and then I just write that, sing it in a video, and send that to David Schmoll, who was the musical director at Boom Chicago. Anytime I send him a video, whatever he sends back is infinitely better than what I had imagined. He’s just so good because he’s been doing it since we were getting suggestions and doing a reggae song about Beefaroni.
Jenny Hagel also did this column, and she told me how much the live audience shifted what you guys put out.
I love the live audience. It’s a real ego boost, you know what I mean? It’s a shock every time. Two hundred people? That’s fucking nuts. Man, at an improv theater, you’d be lucky to get 25.
But it was different to have a live audience. You don’t want them to wait. You can have those elements where you change the set or a costume or you cut back and you’re covered in blood. But it’s always less fun than when it’s live. But, again, it’s two different beasts.
Is there anything from those days that was the most fun for you? Something that, in a very Los Espookys way, made you go, This is dumb! I can’t believe I have fake teeth in for this?
Before we had an audience, everything was 20 percent weirder at least. We were weird because there was no one to go, “Hmmm, we don’t like this.†I think the weirdest thing we ever did — and it’s easily one of my top three favorite moments on the show — was when we did a Cabaret song that was called “Bore Me, Daddy†about Joe Biden. It was just the oddest “Mein Lieber Herr†type of odd German musical song. So strange! I can’t believe we got away with it, and I loved it so much more than anyone else. Those are always the best things on the show: when I’m like, I don’t care how this is received. It’s fantastic, and I must do this.
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