“Saturday Night Live” alum Leslie Jones didn’t always find her time on the show enjoyable, particularly when it came to the characters she would portray in sketches.
Speaking recently on “The Sam Sanders Show,” the comedian reflected on what she called a “frustrating” experience during her five-season stint, remembering how the “SNL” writers would often typecast her as aggressive and violent characters.
“It was kind of frustrating that they would always make me the girl that was angry and beating up people or in love with a white boy,” Jones said. “They just always would make me angry or I’m fighting somebody.”
Jones initially didn’t push back on those negative portrayals because she said she “wanted to be on the show” and “didn’t think that that was happening” in the moment until she noticed the pattern.
“Every time I would get a sketch, I was like, ‘OK, who am I beating up this week?’” she noted. “I just started getting frustrated with [the writers]. I was like, ‘Stop writing me like that.’”
But despite her protests, Jones said the writers maintained that approach because they believed it would make her “successful.”
“They’re like … ‘When you leave here, you’ll be able to make [a career],’” Jones recalled. “No. I don’t want to be Chevy Chase. I don’t want to be whoever. I want to be Leslie. I want to do everything. And I wanted to go across the board with everything, you know?”
When asked whether she believes “SNL” was a “healthy place to be a Black comic,” Jones simply said, “I think that it is the machine that it is. That’s just all I can tell you.”
Jones first joined the cast of “SNL” during its 39th season when she was 47 years old, making her the oldest new recruit in the show’s history.
During her five seasons with the show, Jones received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
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