Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones (born September 7, 1967, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.) is an American comedian and actress known for stand-up comedy specials and screen roles that showcase her gifts for physical comedy and crowd work, the latter comprising spontaneous engagement with audience members during live performances.

Early life and education

Jones is the daughter of Sundra Diane Jones, who worked for a cable company, and Willie Jones, Jr., an electrical engineer in the U.S. Army. His job relocated the family frequently. In 1979 the family moved to Lynwood, California, after Willie Jones was hired as a technician at KJLH, a Los Angeles area radio station owned by Stevie Wonder. Jones began playing basketball in high school and won a scholarship to Chapman University, in Orange county, California. She transferred to Colorado State University after one year at Chapman, following her coach, Brian Berger.

During her first year at Colorado State, Jones discovered her natural affinity for comedy when, after a friend signed her up for a campus-wide comedy contest, Jones was declared the “Funniest Person on Campus.” Jones described that first time performing comedy to NPR’s radio program Fresh Air: “I just remember thinking, I’ve been doing this forever already.…It almost felt like I saw a line leave from the mic and just went out, and it was like, oh, that’s the path I’m taking. It was like I had already been doing it and didn’t know I had been doing it. It was just so natural.” Soon after winning the contest, she left school to return to Los Angeles and pursue a career in comedy.

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Coming up

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Jones honed her skills as a stand-up in comedy clubs usually aimed at Black audiences, while working a series of day jobs, including a justice of the peace, a telemarketer, and a waitress at Roscoe’s, Los Angeles. By the end of the 2000s she had appeared in such television programs as BET’s ComicView and HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, played bit parts on the screen, including in the movie A Guy Thing (2003) and in a 2004 episode of Girlfriends, and opened for comedian Katt Williams on tour. In 2010 Jones had her first comedy special, Problem Child, on Showtime, after which she began to perform in high-profile comedy clubs, including the Comedy Store in Los Angeles.

Saturday Night Live

When Chris Rock saw Jones’s set at the Comedy Store in 2012, he was so impressed that shortly afterward he recommended her for a job at Saturday Night Live, purportedly telling producer Lorne Michaels that Jones was “the funniest woman I know.” Jones joined the writing team in 2014, even though she had little background in sketch comedy. She quickly gained attention and accolades for her appearances on the program’s “Weekend Update” segments, on which she often joked about sensitive and hot-button issues such as the racism and colorism—as in the discrimination of people of color with darker skin tones—that inform contemporary beauty standards. The following season Jones was promoted to cast member, and during her tenure she was nominated for three Emmy Awards.

Ghostbusters: Answer the Call

While performing on Saturday Night Live, Jones had her first starring role in a movie, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters (1984), alongside Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon. The casting of four women in the title roles, however, sparked outrage online by a particularly vocal segment of the original film’s fan base. Some singled out Jones as a target for a barrage of racist and misogynistic comments, as well as a coordinated effort to steal her personal information and documents and distribute them online. Jones was troubled by the backlash, but she turned the situation into material for routines on Saturday Night Live and in a bit at the 2016 broadcast of the Emmy Awards.

Olympics

In 2016 Jones was invited to join NBC’s coverage of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after her fanatical posts on Twitter (now X) about the U.S. Olympic team went viral. She reprised her role as contributor during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (held in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic) and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Jones posted commentary on social media independently of the NBC network. In 2024 NBC announced that Jones would join its coverage as chief super fan commentator at that year’s Summer Olympics in Paris.

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Projects after Saturday Night Live

After five seasons Jones left Saturday Night Live, citing the series’s exhausting workload. She told The New York Times in 2020 that the show is “an institution. I get bored. And I want to do different things.” Since leaving Saturday Night Live in 2019, Jones has been involved in a variety of high-profile projects. She released her second comedy special, Time Machine, on Netflix in 2020, and she appeared in Coming 2 America (2021). Jones served as host of a revival of the 1960s-era game show Supermarket Sweep (2020–22) and as a guest host of The Daily Show, after Trevor Noah’s departure from the program in 2022. Her first book, Leslie F*cking Jones: A Memoir (2023), made The New York Times bestseller list, and Jones’s narration for the audiobook won a 2024 Audie Award for Humor.