Leslie Jones has been a comedic force of nature for nearly 40 years. And in her new stand-special Life Part 2 (streaming this Friday, Oct. 24 on Peacock), she displays more bravado and confidence on stage than ever.
In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Jones breaks down everything that went into getting to this moment in her career, from controversial breakout performance on SNL’s “Weekend Update” to her difficult decision to walk away from that show after five seasons. She discusses her unique relationship with Lorne Michaels, her very real crush on Colin Jost, and working with “scared little boy” Donald Trump the week he hosted the show. Jones also gets into how much she wanted The Daily Show host gig and weighs on a new SNL cast that once again features zero Black women.
“I feel like this is the second part of my life,” Jones, 58, says of her new special’s title. “The first part was a lot of developing, growing, and becoming who I am. And I think this part, I’m going in with a lot of knowledge and experience. And maybe the intermission was me just realizing how to relax.”
“Relaxed” is not a word that most people would use to describe Jones’ intensely physical, high-octane style on stage. She never performs without a towel in her hand and is typically drenched in sweat by the end of her hour. But that energy level doesn’t just come naturally. “I have to psych myself up,” she reveals, saying she still gets nervous every time she performs. “Because with comedy, you just never know what’s gonna happen, you never know how a joke is gonna land, you never know how a joke is gonna affect the audience.”
“I always tell comedians, when you stop getting nervous, you might want to think about retiring because maybe you don’t care anymore,” Jones adds, explaining that she actually feels more anxious about performing now that audiences have big expectations than she did when nobody knew who she was. And that includes people who only know her from SNL and have no idea she’s been a working stand-up comedian since the late 1980s.
Her new special contains a run of jokes about the various “soulmates” she has had over the course of her life, and regularly people in the crowd will shout out Colin Jost’s name.
“Colin wasn’t no damn soulmate,” she says, although she admits that she really was “in love” with him at first. “The first season, I was truly in love with him,” she says. “The second season, I started realizing that he’s not gonna be with me.”
When he started dating his now wife Scarlett Johansson, Jones remembers thinking, “Oh, this is serious.” Calling the actress “so sweet” and “so nice” with “such a great sense of humor,” Jones admits it was hard to hate the woman stealing her man’s heart.
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by following The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
I think people might know that you got hired at SNL during this very public search to add Black women to the show. Sasheer Zamata got in the cast, you got hired as a writer, and then joined the cast later. Now, with Ego Nwodim deciding to leave the show, there are once again no Black women in the cast of SNL. Do you think that’s a problem?
You know, me and Lorne talked about this a lot. It’s really hard to run that show. Lorne literally has to be a magician. He has to make people in Cali laugh and he has to make people in Omaha laugh—at the same thing. And I don’t think they get to see as many Black women as they need to see.
Until they went out and said, we’re gonna make an effort to do it, right?
Right. Until they made an effort to go out and pull some people. And, I hate to say it, but that is what you have to do for Black women. Because we are not everywhere. When I got on there, you remember Kenan [Thompson] had made this statement, which was misquoted. But he was right about this: You have to have your s–t ready. When you go to SNL, there’s no such thing as coming in there thinking, just because I’m Black and I do this, I’m gonna make it. But looking for a Black woman, it takes some time. This is what I would say for SNL, I would want them to start taking more time to do it. Because it does take a little bit more effort to find a Black woman cast member, to me, than it does a white woman cast member. I hate to say it that way, but you have to go and search for them. And they are out there. There are so many women I could send them, and I do. I go, hey, look at this girl, hey, look at this girl. I send them stuff all the time. And I don’t think they expected Ego to leave, but that’s the first thing I said when I went up there. I was like, wait a minute, there’s no Black women on the cast. I was like, are they gonna go back to the Black men playing the Black women?
That was a big problem, right? For instance, Kenan didn’t wanna play Whoopi anymore.
Yeah, I don’t think Kenan’s gonna let them do that. So I wouldn’t be surprised if later on this season they add a Black woman.
When you joined the cast, you were the oldest cast member to ever be on the show. Did you feel at that time that it was something you even thought was possible?
I just think that bringing age into it is so dumb. I hated that. I didn’t know I was old until I joined the cast. When I joined SNL, I became older than a motherf—er! Like, oh, she’s the oldest person to ever walk the Earth!
Well, I’m sorry to bring it up.
No, no, no, not like that. I’m just saying, that’s the way that the media played. It was like, she’s too old. How’s she gonna be able to read the script? She can’t see. She’s old. No, I was running suckers around them motherf—ers. I’ve never thought of myself as old.
But there’s a positive to it as well, right? Because you had the confidence—and even your relationship with Lorne Michaels is maybe different than some of the really young people who come in there.
My relationship with Lorne and [producer Steve] Higgins was completely different from everybody else. Because I was likew, you’re not gonna talk to me like you talk to them f—ing kids. I’m a grown a– woman. I’ll whoop your a–. I think I told Higgins one time, who the f— you talking to, Higgins? I know you’re not talking to me, you ready to fight motherf—er? Because I’ll kill you. Don’t you talk to me like that. And for me, I wanted to break Lorne out. It was just like Devil Wears Prada. He gets off the elevator, motherf—ers start running. When he got off the elevator, I would run full speed towards Lorne and grab him and be like, “Hey!”
Did it take a while for him to warm up to that? Or was he right on board from the beginning?
He loved that s–t. Because I would tell him everything that was going on. Me and him would text each other in the middle of the night. Kenan even said, you and Lorne’s relationship is f—ing weird. And I was like, I’m telling you, if me and Lorne met [back in the day], I would’ve been his baby mama. So I think I woke people up there, when they were saying “the oldest,” I was like, well, the most experienced, the most spicy, b—h! The most veteran, the most seasoned. I always tell people like, it doesn’t matter what f—ing age you are, unless you’re dead, you could still do whatever the f— you want. So, no, I didn’t think I couldn’t do it. I thought that I could do it more than anybody that was there. I was very cocky about it.
You’ve spoken about some of the more difficult situations and clashes with people that you had behind the scenes. It seems from the outside that you and Lorne did have this incredible mutual respect. Did you ever clash with him or have any conflict with him?
Oh my god, yes! We used to argue. We used to argue all the time, but we would always make up. I would fuss about maybe not being in a sketch or something, or I’d be like, tell the writers they need to write for me! And then we would fight, and then I’d be like, I’m sorry. And he’d be like, I’m sorry too. Or he’d send me flowers. One week I remember didn’t wanna do something. And he was like, OK, well I’m gonna have to call the writers and tell them that you don’t want to be on the show this week. And I was like, no, that’s not what I’m saying! And that’s when I realized, I’m an important part of the show, but I’m not SNL. He was like, “Leslie, you’re so good, but you’re not SNL. And I had to take that, because that’s true. SNL will still go on when I leave.
What do you remember about the week Trump hosted the show in 2015?
I remember him walking into the [table read] room with all the sketches and he looked like a scared little boy. And you know, I never took that dude seriously. Everybody was so uptight and scared, and I just remember sitting at the host meal. I had to go to the host meal and Kenan, for some reason, wasn’t there. I usually didn’t go to the host meal unless Kenan went. But Taran [Killam] was there. And I remember turning to Taran and I was just making a joke. It was Trump, then Melania, then [producer] Lindsay Shookus, then Ivanka, and Jared was sitting beside me. And we were trying to share fish, and I had already noticed that Jared wouldn’t eat off the plate that I wasn’t eating off of. So I already knew what was up. So I looked at Taran and I said, “If I kill this whole side of the table, maybe I’ll save the world.” And then Taran was like, “Let me get my food to go first, because I don’t wanna be here when you do that.” But I always think back, like, was I supposed to do it?
Things would be different now.
I would’ve saved the world! I would be in jail, but I would’ve saved the world.
I love that sketch, too, where you auditioned to play Trump. Was that your idea? Or where did that come from?
That’s one I’m proud of. I really wanted to play Trump. I went and talked to Lorne and I was like, wouldn’t it be hilarious if I played Trump? It would p— him off and I would play him so good. And Lorne was like, no. So I was like, this is f—ed up, Lorne, you don’t never let me play stuff that I like to do. And I forgot who ended up writing it. I think Kyle [Mooney] and Beck [Bennett] and them wrote it. So we did it, and when we got to do the office thing, Lorne kept saying, you’re not gonna be Trump, but I’m gonna let you beat me up. So that was really fun. It was tedious because the director, I didn’t really like him, but it turned out to be a really good pre-tape.
Was it a difficult decision for you to leave the show when you did?
Very difficult, because usually you have to give seven years. But I knew that I couldn’t stay seven years. If they got me in my twenties or thirties, I would’ve been there at least 10 seasons. But since I was older and at this point, they had started making me like a caricature of myself—people wouldn’t really put me in sketches, because what I realized when I left was, anytime I’m in the sketch, even if I’m not saying anything, I’m going to take over the sketch.
Your energy was such that no one could compete with you on screen.
Yeah. But I hated that. And I didn’t like who I was becoming there. So I remember thinking, this is going to be a really hard decision, because, first of all, I don’t think Lorne’s gonna let me go. And two, I’m scared about what’s gonna happen when I do leave. But then I also remember that I was a comic first. I was a really good comic. And I’m gonna be OK. I believe in myself. And you know, Lorne, we had a long talk. I knew he was gonna pull all the, “we’ll pay you more, we’ll give you this.” And then it started coming down to, “hey, I don’t want you to lose your fame.” And it just came back down to, listen, I believe in myself and I gotta go. I gotta go before I can’t go. You know what I’m saying? And he just said, “The good ones always wanna leave.”
Except for Kenan.
Yeah, Kenan is a rock. He’s so awesome. Oh my god, if he does leave, I don’t know if that show will survive without him. Like I said, I’m not SNL. But Kenan is SNL.
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
The post Leslie Jones Tells All on Trump, Lorne, and Life After ‘SNL’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
