“You know what’s so crazy? I’m famous,” says the comedian Leslie Jones, clad in a black sparkling “Heart Breaker” T-shirt and ever-present towel in hand (for her hot flashes) on her new comedy special “Life Part 2.” “Why would they give fame to me? Why?” she asks. “I still go to 7-Eleven in my pajamas.”
Ms. Jones’s incredulity may make sense when you consider that, though she’s been doing stand-up for over 30 years — a journey that began when her college friend, Denita Abernethy, entered Ms. Jones, then a student at Colorado State University, in the “Funniest Person on Campus” competition (she won) — Ms. Jones didn’t break out until she was 47 when she joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” shortly after having been hired by the show as a writer. Not that she’s complaining: Ms. Jones, who at 58 now divides her time between Los Angeles and New York City, contended that she wasn’t ready for fame or success when she was younger.
“I didn’t even know who the president was when I was in my 20s,” she said. “It’s like, all I wanted to know was, where’s the free tequila?”
Ms. Jones wasn’t apathetic; she was carrying a lot of trauma. She said she was sexually abused by a babysitter when she was a toddler. Her parents — Willie Jones Jr., an electronic engineer, and Sundra Diane Jones, a cable company employee who suffered a stroke at 38 — were struggling. Her younger brother, Rodney (who went by his middle name, Keith), dealt drugs and had trouble extricating himself from that life. And, at 19, she had been chastened by the up-and-coming comedian Jamie Foxx who offered her some salient, if harsh, advice after she bombed during a set at The World. “Go live your life and make some material — because right now you have none,” she recounts him saying in her memoir, “Leslie F*cking Jones.”
So Ms. Jones quit comedy for six years, taking on a variety of odd jobs including stints as a justice of the peace, and a bartender, hostess, waitress and cook for the same restaurant. She also worked at two Scientology-owned businesses in Glendale, Calif. (she is not a Scientologist) and, perhaps most rewardingly, was a summer league basketball coach for 10- to 12-year-old kids at the local Y.W.C.A. The kids were among the chorus of people who encouraged Ms. Jones to return to comedy. Now she had material.
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