©Columbia Photos/courtesy Everett Co / Everett Assortment
Rolling Stone printed an excerpt from Leslie Jones’ new memoir by which the actor spread out in regards to the brutal racism and demise threats she won over her involvement within the 2016 “Ghostbusters” reboot. The Sony unlock, directed through “Bridesmaids” helmer Paul Feig, become the objective of racist and misogynistic trolls for that includes a major solid of all ladies. Jones starred in “Ghostbusters” reverse Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon.
Jones recalled the movie’s Ecu press excursion, the place a journalist stated to her: “I don’t like this film, and also you’ve were given 5 mins to turn out to me that it’s value looking at.”
“It wasn’t simply racism and misogyny, both,” she writes. “A large number of it needed to do with the truth that I used to be taking part in an MTA employee, as despite the fact that that used to be one thing I must be embarrassed about. I’d attempted to combat again — I used to be a comic book — I used to be used to any individual heckling me, so for each and every piece of bullshit on Twitter I had a answer.”
Jones ended up deleting her Twitter account for twenty-four hours for the reason that on-line harassment used to be so unhealthy and since “there have been more than one makes an attempt to hack me.” Jark Dorsey used to be the CEO of Twitter on the time and despatched a tweet to Jones telling her to DM him. She writes that “he used to be conscious that I used to be being brutally attacked with racial slurs and worse,” so she she messaged him, including: “Jack put folks on my account to observe it as a result of any individual is at all times seeking to hack me.”
Afterward, Jones remembered breaking down in tears for the reason that bullying were given so antagonistic and became to demise threats. “I will’t imagine somebody would do that shit to any individual, somebody, for running,” she writes. “That is terrible. I’m in a film. Dying threats for one thing as small as that?”
“I used to be being despatched motion pictures of being hanged, of white guys jacking off on my image, announcing, ‘You fucking n—–. We going to kill you,’” she persevered. “Why are folks being so evil to one another? How are you able to take a seat and kind ‘I need to kill you.’ Who does that?”
Jones additionally remembered director Jason Reitman announcing on a podcast that his 2021 reboot “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” used to be “attempting to return to the unique method and hand the film again to the lovers.” Jones referred to as this an “unforgivable” remark.
Even supposing Reitman attempted to stroll it again (he later stated, “That got here out mistaken! I’ve not anything however admiration for Paul and Leslie and Kate and Melissa and Kristen and the bravery with which they made Ghostbusters 2016. They expanded the universe and made an incredible film!”), Jones writes, “The wear used to be performed. Mentioning the theory of giving the film ‘again to the lovers’ used to be a sexy transparent shout-out to all the ones losers who went after us for making an all-female movie.”
In other places within the excerpt, Jones stated she additionally needed to combat for her value on set all the way through the making of the “Ghostbusters” reboot.
“It used to be made transparent to me from time to time all the way through the method that I used to be fortunate to also be on that film, however in truth, I used to be considering, ‘I don’t need to be on this muthafucka,’” she writes. “Particularly as I were given paid approach lower than Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. No knock on them, however my first be offering used to be to do this film for $67,000. I needed to combat to get extra (after all I were given $150K), however the message used to be transparent: ‘That is gonna blow you up—after this, you’re made for existence,’ all that roughly shit, as despite the fact that I hadn’t had many years of a a hit profession already. And after all, all it made for me used to be heartache and one big-ass controversy.”
Jones’ memioir, “Leslie F*cking Jones,” is now in the stores. Head over to Rolling Stones’ website online to learn the excerpt in its entirety.
