The Untold Truth Of Leslie Jones

Jones' upbringing is fascinating unto itself. She was born Annette Jones on September 7th, 1967 in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father was in the military, and her family often relocated. She also had a brother named Rodney Keith Jones, who sadly died in 2009. While living in Los Angeles, Jones' father ended up working as an electronics engineer for Stevie Wonder's radio station, KJLH. Jones, on the other hand, busied herself with attending high school in Lynwood, California. Lynwood is located near Compton, which is why she often makes jokes about growing up in the latter city.

Jones grew up to be 6 feet tall and struggled with insecurity about her looks. "People used to call me names so my mom had this beautiful African lady come talk to me," Jones told People in 2016. "I was like, 'Oh my God if I'm going to look like you then I don't care what anyone says about me.'" Eventually, Jones took advantage of her height and followed her father's advice of playing basketball. She received a basketball scholarship from Chapman University in Orange, California, but transferred to Colorado State University when her coach left for that school.

Jones found her calling after a friend at Colorado State entered her into a "funniest person on campus" event. Jones won the contest and promptly quit college (much to the chagrin of her coach and parents) so that she could move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in stand-up. While performing at regular clubs, Jones worked several odd jobs to make ends meet: She had stints working for Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, the UPS, and, and, believe it or not, as a telemarketer for Scientology. 

Famed comedians Mother Love and Dave Chappelle encouraged Jones to move to New York. She took their advice and went there to hone her craft, eventually performing on BET's ComicView. In time, Jones returned to LA, where she opened for Jamie Foxx and was brutally booed. Thankfully, Foxx gave her some advice: "'The reason you were so bad,'" Jones recalled him saying, "'is because you didn't have anything to talk about. You don't have a boyfriend. You're fresh out of college. You ain't doing nothing. You don't have anything to talk about. Go live life for a little while and then start writing.'" Jones didn't perform for three years following this. She feared being pigeonholed as well, so in 2010, she began to stop exclusively performing at "Black clubs."

Even though Jones eventually joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live," she was not initially a fan of the prolific sketch show. In a 2013 interview with videographer Patricia Tone, Jones explained that she wasn't into "SNL" and that Kenan Thompson was, in her opinion, "not funny." While Jones didn't mention Thompson by name during that interview, she did say he was not "a stand-up," and went on to presumably respond to comments Thompson made to TV Guide in 2013, in which he espoused a belief that Black comediennes were not ready for "SNL."

In 2020, Jones told radio host Howard Stern that she was originally going to tell the "SNL" producers "no" at her audition but ended up going through with it because she thought the audition could lead to other opportunities. Funnily enough, this carefree attitude is likely how she aced the audition. As she recounted to Stern, "I thought to myself, 'Oh! This is the Comedy Store at two o'clock at night!' ... So I got on stage and there was empty chairs in the front, and I was like, 'Nuh-uh, that's not how I work. Let's go, everybody move to the front! ... And everybody moved up to the front." In January 2014, Jones became an "SNL" writer.

In January 2014, Leslie Jones joined the writing staff of "Saturday Night Live" and became a cast member that fall, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Long a popular stand-up comic and occasional actor, Jones was among the older cast members in "SNL" history, making her first appearance at age 47. Another late-night late bloomer is Mikey Day, a veteran TV writer who came onboard the "SNL" creative staff in 2013 and was added to the cast three years later at age 36. Jones and Day appeared in numerous sketches together in their overlapping "SNL" tenures, but their connection goes back years.

"He told me that when he was little, he used to go to this restaurant in Orange County called Spoons," Jones told The Hollywood Reporter. "And he remembered this lady who used to wait on him." That "lady" — a teenage server who attended to 6-year-old Day and his family — was Jones. The comedian said the realization made her and Day laugh "for 15 minutes."

The high-pressure, fast-paced world of "Saturday Night Live" can be an intimate experience, and it's produced many offscreen duos, creative partners, and close friends alike. Case in point: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis, and Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. They joined the NBC late-night sketch comedy show in 2012 and 2014, respectively, and quickly developed a mutual admiration society appearing in many sketches alongside each other, which only got stronger during production on the 2016 "Ghostbusters" movie. "Leslie and I have worked together for two years at 'SNL.' We were very close by the time we got there to film and got so much closer, pathologically closer over the course of the summer in fact," McKinnon told Refinery29. McKinnon's involvement in the movie is a big part of why Jones agreed to co-star. "I had some doubts in the beginning, but after I saw who was cast and who was directing, I didn't have any," Jones added.

Jones has often singled out McKinnon for praise on her Twitter feed. Around the time of the "SNL" season finale episode in May 2018, Jones posted a video of McKinnon dancing and called her "MY B**** FOR LIFE!!!" A year later, when Jones departed "SNL," she thanked cast members for their creativity, comedy, and humanity, especially McKinnon. "I will miss Kate's loving hugs and talks when I needed," Jones wrote.

Jones has proven herself as an actress and comedian, but you might not know that she's proven herself as a huge "Game of Thrones" fan as well. Jones live-tweeted many episodes of the massively successful series, and also provided commentary as part of the "Late Night with Seth Meyers" segment, "Game of Jones." A major highlight from this reoccurring segment came when Jones and Meyers watched the Season 7 episode "The Spoils of War": She begins to talk about how untrustworthy Varys is when his actor, Conleth Hill, walks into the room in his Varys costume and surprises her.

Series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss also directed Jones' stand-up special for Netflix, "Time Machine." Jones explained to late night host Jimmy Fallon how she recruited these writers-directors to direct her special. She first considered Steven Spielberg, but Lorne Michaels put the kibosh on that. She also considered J.J. Abrams, but "Star Wars" was keeping him busy.  "Then I was like, 'Who else could catch action but somebody who shoots a dragon?'" Jones concluded, "What am I? A dragon!" Controversial "Game of Thrones" finale aside, Jones can certainly pick talented filmmakers to direct her stand-up specials.

Since her elevation to superstardom after joining the cast of "Saturday Night Live," Leslie Jones became almost as famous for her enthusiastic live recapping of the Olympics on her social media channels. According to People, Jones provided eager live updates to various events through multiple Summer and Winter Games. But early in the 2022 Winter Olympics, held in Beijing, China, Jones floated retiring from the gig. "i m starting to feel like this should be my last olympics i live tweet," she wrote on Instagram. "But I'm tired of fighting the folks who don't want me to do it. They block my videos and they get folks who think they can do it like me."

Jones was effectively calling out both NBC Sports and Peacock, whom she says respectively ordered her posts featuring footage from the Olympics to be removed for violating copyright laws, and tried to bring a similar joking, informal commentary to the Games with a highlights show hosted by comedian Kevin Hart and rapper Snoop Dogg. After Jones spoke out, NBC Sports issued an apology to Jones, as well as an all clear. "This was the result of a third-party error, and the situation has been resolved," the organization said in a statement. "She is free to do her social media posts as she has done in the past."

Following her departure from "Saturday Night Live" in 2019, Leslie Jones' first major return to scripted series television came in the form of the HBO Max historical comedy "Our Flag Means Death." Set in the 18th century and very loosely based on real people and true events, the series is a workplace comedy about pirates — specifically gentleman buccaneer Stede Bonnet and the legendary Blackbeard. Jones appeared in three episodes of the series' first season as Spanish Jackie, a fictionalized version of actual historical pirate Jacquotte Delahaye. Spanish Jackie runs a tough bar in a pirate haven where she collects the noses of vanquished enemies as well as husbands.

Producers of "Our Flag Means Death" approached Jones with the role, and she was all in. "As soon as they said 'pirate,' I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I get to wear pirate boots? Yes for sure,'" Jones recalled to Polygon. "They told me, 'Spanish Jackie has a wooden hand and like 20 husbands.' I was like, 'Sign me up, I'll do this for free!'" Jones told TV Insider that she especially loved the pirate fight scenes, for which she trained extensively, and her elaborate, intricate costumes.