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I’d been doing comedy since 1987; now, it was 2013, and I was tired of this shit. Flying in, doing a show, getting $1,000, maybe $1,500, being bumped to headliner without getting paid more… And all because these pieces of shit make up some crap about having to drive home in the snow.
“Listen,” I said, walking up to him to make sure he realized I was at least a foot taller than he was. “You obviously don’t know me. You shouldn’t be making this decision yourself. You should go back and talk to the other promoter. The one that hired me and who does, indeed, know me.”
The business was filled with so many of these chauvinistic pieces of shit. I knew what they said about me: “If she thinks she’s so funny, see if she can follow me… The crowd think that joke’s funny because she did it, but watch me do it.” Everybody thought I was a fluke. But I knew I wasn’t just lucky;
But after my brother died, it was like a sheet got pulled back. Nothing was as colorful as before.
One of the people who taught me to make sure no one took me for granted was my father, Willie Jones Jr. He was an electronics engineer in the army—a genius at it, too. But I didn’t see him much in my early years; I know now that he was off serving his country abroad. Back then, though, I had no idea he was risking his life because to me, Daddy was just Daddy. Recently, me and my uncle William Earl were talking about my dad, and I was amazed at some of the stuff he told me.
He knew I’d have to fight for everything I got. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re Black and you’re a woman and you can’t do it,” he’d say. “You can do whatever the fuck you want. As long as you work hard. But you have to work hard.
Dad was probably in his late forties; he’s now in a motel, living off a son who was selling drugs. It was truly rock bottom. Looking back at the fight between me and my brother’s girl, I realize my brother was probably taking the shit with my dad out on her, but at the time I didn’t need her bringing this shit to work and letting everybody know about our family issues.
I had found my friend Jesus again, and though I would definitely lose him and find him again, I realized that he’s more interested in people who know they are not perfect than people who think they are. I was always thinking that I was supposed to be this perfect person, but he was like, “I’m not building you for that—I’m building you to reach people. You can reach people I can’t. You talk to people I can’t talk to. You can tell them that loving themselves is the way to love God. Because when you do that you can love others.” (I wouldn’t start realizing the full truth of that until after SNL.)
“my name is Leslie, peace!” and those bitches were throwing money at me. (Even the New Jersey Nets dudes, who’d been in the corner the whole time, were going nuts.) I genuinely didn’t really fully comprehend what had happened until I walked offstage and Tony Roberts grabbed me, spun me around, and said, “You just won this muthafucka!” Sure enough, I did win that night; I got the cash and a black Def Jam jacket,
Secretly I’d grown weary of New York. I was missing LA, so after a couple of years there, in 2000, I headed back home. By this point, my father was sick. He was drinking a lot, and whatever other ailments he had, he didn’t make them any better by hitting the bottle so much. I’m pretty sure by this point he had cirrhosis, and a bad heart for sure. I think my dad knew that he was coming to an end, or that everything was coming to an end. While I was still in New York, one day he went to the facility where my mom was living—she’d been in a facility since 1987—put her in a truck, and started
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While he was there, my dad and I had a great talk on the phone. We came to a kind of peace with each other. I asked him why he’d been so hard on me. “I was hard on you, Leslie,” he said, “but look where you are now. I’ve never had to take care of you. I’ve never had to bail you out of jail like your brother. I’ve never had to save your life. You saved your own life. Everything that I wanted you to become, you became. But your brother, he was another thing. We got tired, Leslie—tired of raising him. I wish we didn’t. But you? You are your own person. I love you.”
After my brother died, a new me showed up. It was impossible to go back to being the same person after something like that happens to you. When you get somebody dying in your life that you didn’t expect to die, that shit will fuck you up. Things suddenly became urgent. I now had one goal—to make it. And I don’t mean making it like you might think I mean it.
There were maybe twelve of us invited for those SNL auditions. It was March 2013, and Kenan Thompson—who ended up really being my home boy—had recently made headlines when he’d been misquoted by TV Guide talking about Black female comedians. What he actually said was “It’s just a tough part of the business. Like in auditions, they just never find ones that are ready.”
Ghostbusters came out July 11, 2016, but before it had even hit the movie theaters it had been the subject of intense online abuse—and no surprise that I was the one who got most of the hate. For a start, sad keyboard warriors living in their mothers’ basements hated the fact that this hallowed work of perfect art now featured—gasp! horror!—women in the lead roles. Worst of all, of course, was that one of the lead characters was a Black woman. For some men this was the final straw.
Of all the women in Paul’s remake of the movie, I was the one who got taken through the ringer. I wonder why… Oh, right, because I was a Black girl.
“I’m from TMZ,” she said. “Do you know that your nudes and your passport and your ID and everything else is up online?” They’d gotten it all from old emails. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What?” “Yeah,” she said, “they just revealed it. What do you have to say about that?” “How did you get this number? Did you get it from the hacking?” “I was trying to help.” “You’re not helping,
I got to see Prince. (I’ll never forget Prince being on SNL; at one point he saw me to the side of the stage and because the room was dark, he thought I was Chris Rock. I know that because he called me Chris Rock.)
After being there for a while, working at SNL could sometimes feel like high school. There were the popular people, and then the people who had to work to get popular. The writers tended to only use me for their shit, not for what I wanted to do—
It all goes together to make up who you are. Go through it all—it’s yours. You should love it and own it as yours. It’s what helps you love yourself, and all of you, not just the good parts. You may not be perfect, but you are somebody, and you have a story. You don’t need to be anyone but who you are. So many of us are trying to escape from who we are. Stand in yourself. I swear, if you start that work, you will be amazed to find out you are awesome. There is only one you.
My talent can take me anywhere I want to go. I’m not conceited or cocky. I’m just convinced. Trust me, you have to fight to get to that point.
