Former Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones revealed she had to comfort a frightened Donald Trump the first time she met him.
Jones made this admission while discussing Trump’s second SNL appearance with the Daily Beast’s “Obsessed” podcaster Matt Wilstein on Friday.
“I didn’t know Trump was so evil,” Jones said. “He was the Apprentice. He was this joke to me.”
Jones was describing Trump’s first table read when he notoriously appeared on SNL in November 2015, during his initial 2016 presidential campaign.
Jones’ former co-star Taran Killam would later go on to condemn SNL’s decision to platform Trump despite vocal protests outside.
“We could hear the protests during our table read,” Killam told NPR in 2017. “As we’re reading 40 mediocre sketches, we just hear, ‘No Trump! Donald Trump!’ … I am embarrassed, upon reflection, just because of how everyone was right. Every person outside of that building protesting was absolutely right.”
Jones said Saturday that she could tell her fellow cast members were “freaked out” by Trump’s presence, but she was not.
“What people need to understand about comedians is that we see everything,” she said. “I see the insecurity, I see the fear.”
And fear and insecurity were exactly what Jones said she saw in Trump.
“When he walked into the table read, he had all of his scripts in his hands like a little boy, and you could tell he was lost,” she said. “He was very uncomfortable.”
Jones described Trump dumping his scripts and immediately taking out his flip phone. The moment the call ended, Jones said she took pity on the presidential candidate.
“I said, ‘Trump! How much money did you just make, man? How much money did you just make, Trump?!”
Jones said that was all Trump needed to calm down.
“I knew that’s a little boy,” she said. Jones then compared Trump to a specific, if fictional, boy: Biff Tannen, the famous antagonist of “Back to the Future.”
“That’s a little Biff,” said Jones. “And we let Biff become the president and Biff let all his frat boy friends take over and destroy the office.”
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