Leslie Jones (comedian)

Early life

Annette Jones was born on September 7, 1967, in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father was in the United States Army, and her family moved frequently. Her family moved to Los Angeles, when her father took a job at Stevie Wonder's radio station, KJLH, as an electronics engineer. Jones attended high school in Lynwood, California, where she also played basketball; in May 2015, she stated on Late Night with Seth Meyers that her father suggested that she play the sport because she is six feet tall.

Jones attended Chapman University on a basketball scholarship and transferred to Colorado State University when her coach left Chapman for Colorado State. She intended to become a lawyer, but changed her mind and changed her major a few times, including to business accounting and computer science and eventually ended up majoring in communications. At Chapman, Jones became a radio DJ. She was unsure of what she wanted to do and contemplated the possibility of a career playing basketball overseas.

She had a brother, Rodney, who has died.

Stand-up

Jones started to do stand-up comedy in college in 1987, when a friend signed her up for a "Funniest Person on Campus" contest. After she won the contest, Jones left school and moved to Los Angeles. She performed at regular clubs and worked at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles and UPS to make ends meet. Mother Love and Dave Chappelle encouraged her to move to New York City to hone her craft for two years, where she appeared on BET's ComicView before returning to Los Angeles. She performed at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, but received unfavorable reviews. She opened up for Jamie Foxx and was booed by the audience. Feeling discouraged, Jones stopped performing for three years.

In 2008, Jones was part of Katt Williams's It's Pimpin' Pimpin' tour.

Saturday Night Live

In December 2013, Saturday Night Live held a casting call to add at least one African-American woman to the show, and Jones auditioned. Prior to being asked to audition, Jones had criticized the show, saying that the show, and especially cast member Kenan Thompson, was "not funny". Sasheer Zamata was added as a featured player, while Jones and LaKendra Tookes were hired as writers. Jones appeared during the Weekend Update segment of the May 3, 2014 episode hosted by Andrew Garfield, where her jokes about her current dating problems and her potential effectiveness as a breeding slave were met with controversy.

Jones appeared in the first and third episodes of the 40th season, hosted by Chris Pratt and Bill Hader, respectively. On October 20, 2014, Jones was promoted to the cast as a featured player, and made her official debut on the October 25, 2014 episode hosted by Jim Carrey. She became, at the age of 47, the oldest person to join the show as a cast member (surpassing Michael McKean and George Coe, who were 46 when they joined the show in, respectively, 1994 and 1975). Jones' addition marks the first time in SNL history that the show's cast has included more than one African-American woman; in addition, the 40th season has the most African-American cast members to date. Jones subsequently returned for Seasons 41 and 42.

Film

In 2014, Jones appeared in Chris Rock's directing debut, Top Five; Rock has said a follow-up is in the works, telling Complex Magazine, "Some people really shine in Top Five. You might want to see a little more Leslie Jones."

In 2015, Jones appeared in the Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer project, Trainwreck; reportedly Apatow and Schumer wrote a part specifically for Jones after seeing her turn in Top Five.

In 2016, she starred in the reboot Ghostbusters as Patty Tolan, alongside Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon.

2016 Olympics

During the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Jones drew attention on social media and in the press as a Team USA "superfan", regularly live-tweeting events and posting videos of her reactions. Enthusiasm for Jones's commentary grew, with articles appearing like The Huffington Post's "Watching Leslie Jones Watch The Olympics Is Better Than The Actual Olympics." Television producer Mike Shoemaker, one of Jones's Twitter followers, posted on Twitter that his friend Jim Bell, NBC's executive producer of the network's Olympics coverage, should add Jones to NBC's team of commentators covering the Games; Bell responded on Twitter the next day asking Jones to join NBC in Rio. She accepted and flew to Rio, covering swimming, track and field, gymnastics and beach volleyball for NBC.

Other projects

Jones and fellow comedian Adam DeVine appeared in a 2016 ad campaign for Allstate Insurance, created by Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Jones hosted the BET Awards on June 25 2017. This marks her hosting debut.

Influences

Jones has cited as her comedic influences Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor,, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, John Ritter, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Online attacks

Following the release of Ghostbusters, Jones became the target of numerous accounts on social networking site Twitter making racially charged attacks. Twitter responded by taking action against several users, resulting in a lifetime ban of user and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos who was accused of orchestrating it. After continuing to receive racial comments towards her, Jones announced that she would be leaving Twitter on July 18, 2016. Jones appeared later in the week on Late Night with Seth Meyers, in which she described the ordeal and her meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Responding to Yiannopoulos's claim that he was targeted for being a "gay conservative", Jones stated, "Free speech and hate speech [are] two different things".

Nearly a month later, Jones was again the subject of numerous online attacks. Her personal website was hacked, with its contents being replaced by photos of her driver's license and passport. The site was also made to display alleged nude photographs of Jones, as well as a video tribute to Harambe, the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla killed in May 2016 (a reference to the racially charged gorilla remarks directed at Jones in the earlier attack). Jones' team took the website down shortly after it was hacked.

Both incidents resulted in large outpourings of celebrity and fan support, via the hashtag "#LoveForLeslieJ", which trended on both Twitter and Instagram. Questlove commented that what had happened to Jones qualified as "hate crimes". Paul Feig, Gabourey Sidibe, Ellen DeGeneres, Sara Benincasa, Ava DuVernay, Hillary Clinton, Corey Taylor, Katy Perry, Octavia Spencer, Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham and Loni Love expressed solidarity with Jones. Jones responded to the hacks on the October 22, 2016, episode of Saturday Night Live.