Leslie Jones

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About

Leslie Jones is an American comedian and actress best known for being a cast member on Saturday Night Live live since 2014.

History

Leslie Jones became interested in stand-up comedy while attending Colorado State University in 1987, after one of her friends signed Jones up for a "Funniest Person on Campus" contest. After winning the contest, Jones decided to leave school and moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of stand-up comedy. Throughout the 1990s, Jones regularly performed at comedy clubs while working odd jobs to make a living, though she struggled to find her fame. After receiving negative reviews from the critics and getting booed by the audience while opening up for Jamie Foxx, Jones went on a hiatus for three years. In 2010, Jones returned to the stage by joining Katt Williams' "Its Pimpin' Pimpin'" tour across the country, from which she quickly emerged as a breakout sensation (shown below).

Saturday Night Live

In December 2013, Jones was hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live after auditioning in a casting call in replacement of Maya Rudolph. On May 3rd, 2014, Jones made her debut appearance in the Weekend Update segment of the show, during which she joked about how different her dating life would've been in slavery:

“See, I’m single right now, but back in the slave days, I would have never been single. I’m six feet tall and I’m strong, Colin. Strong! I mean, look at me, I’m a mandingo … I’m just saying that back in the slave days, my love life would have been way better. Massah would have hooked me up with the best brotha on the plantation … I would be the No. 1 slave draft pick.”

Upon the airing of the segment, Jones' bit was immediately met with backlash on Twitter from those who found her jokes offensive, which prompted the comedian to respond with a series of heated tweets in self-defense.

Despite the controversy over her performance in the Weekend Update segment, Jones made two additional cameo appearances in the 40th season. On October 20th, 2014, Jones was promoted to a featured cast member on Saturday Night Live, making her official debut later that weekend as the oldest comedian to join the SNL cast, at the age of 47.

Ghostbusters (2016)

In January 2015, Sony Pictures announced an original reboot of the 1980s American supernatural comedy film series Ghostbusters under the helm of Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig as the director and with an all-female cast starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.

Website Hack

On the morning of August 24th, 2016, Jones' personal website was compromised by an unknown hacker who vandalized the front page with pictures and videos of Harambe, along with several sexually explicit photographs of the actress stolen from her iCloud account. That morning, TMZ was the first news site to report the hack, noting that the website had been quickly removed.

Later that day, musician Questlove Gomez tweeted that the hack against Jones was "sickening," "racist" and "sexist" (shown below). Within four hours, the tweet gathered more than 5,400 likes and 4,300 retweets.^[21]

Meanwhile, Redditor alkalinecoffee submitted a post titled "After hearing that Leslie Jones' nudes were leaked on the internet," featuring a picture of television host Randy Jackson with the caption "Yeah that's gonna be a no for me dawg" (shown below). Within three hours, the post gained over 500 votes (82% upvoted) on /r/AdviceAnimals.^[14] Also on August 24th, Milo Yiannopoulos posted a Facebook^[22] status update wishes Jones "all the best during what must be a very traumatic experience." In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the hack, including The New York Times^[13], Snopes^[14], AV Club^[15], ABC News^[16], Gizmodo^[17], The Washington Post^[18], Gothamist^[19] and NY Daily News.^[20]

Online Presence

On June 14th, 2009, Leslie Jones created her Twitter account under her online moniker @Lesdoggg^[2], drawing more than 799,000 followers in the next seven years. On February 11th, 2011, Leslie Jones launched her Facebook page^[23], which has accrued over 70,000 likes, as of August 2016.