Leslie Jones Reflects on ‘Ghostbusters’ Reboot Backlash

Leslie Jones opens up about her Ghostbusters experience in her new memoir, explaining in detail what it was like to be the subject of such harsh criticism online.

Back in 2016, the Ghostbusters was rebooted with Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. The film featured Jones as one of the four stars, playing a new incarnation of the titular team alongside Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, and Kristen Wiig. Before the film was even released, it was heavily criticized online. At the time, Jones had even removed herself from social media temporarily due to the vitriol that had been directed at her personally, including racist comments and death threats.

Per Rolling Stone, an excerpt published from Leslie Jones’ memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones, reveals how it felt for the former SNL star to receive this kind of treatment. She says how Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey personally told her that he had company employees monitoring her account because hackers were continuously trying to get in. For her part, Jones had trouble understanding why people could be so dastardly over her casting in a comedy film.

“I can’t believe anyone would do this shit to someone, anyone, for working,” Jones said. “This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that?”

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Jones continued, “I was being sent films of being hanged, of white guys j**king off on my picture, saying, ‘You f**king [racial slur]. We going to kill you.’ Why are people being so evil to each other? How can you sit and type ‘I want to kill you.’ Who does that?”

What didn’t help at the time was Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman later said that the 2021 film would “hand the movie back to the fans.” While Reitman would later claim that his comments “came out wrong,” clarifying that he thought Answer the Call was an “amazing movie,” Jones found the comment to be “unforgivable.”

“The damage was done,” Jones says. “Bringing up the idea of giving the movie ‘back to the fans’ was a pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us for making an all-female film.”

The Supermarket Sweep reboot host also rejected the idea that she should feel “lucky” to be a part of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. She says people tried to instill that thought into her mind during production, but she never truly felt that the film was something she needed. Jones points to the pay discrepancy between herself and her co-stars as another qualm, revealing she had to fight for more pay. She alludes that, at the end of the day, it may not have been worth all of the “heartache” she’d endured.

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“It was made clear to me at times during the process that I was lucky to even be on that movie, but honestly, I was thinking, ‘I don’t have to be in this muthaf**ka,’” Jones explains. “Especially as I got paid way less than Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. No knock on them, but my first offer was to do that movie for $67,000. I had to fight to get more (in the end, I got $150K), but the message was clear: ‘This is gonna blow you up—after this, you’re made for life,’ all that kind of sh*t, as though I hadn’t had decades of a successful career already. And in the end, all it made for me was heartache and one big-ass controversy.”

Leslie F*cking Jones is now available in bookstores.