Leslie Jones Opens Up on ‘Ghostbusters’ Death Threats, Jason Reitman’s ‘Unforgivable’ Comment and Fighting to Increase Her $67K Salary Offer
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Rolling Stone published an excerpt from Leslie Jones’ new memoir in which the actor opened up about the brutal racism and death threats she received over her involvement in the 2016 “Ghostbusters” reboot.
The Sony release, directed by “Bridesmaids” helmer Paul Feig, became the target of racist and misogynistic trolls for featuring a main cast of all women.
Jones starred in “Ghostbusters” opposite Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon. Jones recalled the film’s European press tour, where a journalist said to her: “I don’t like this movie, and you’ve got five minutes to prove to me that it is worth watching.” “It wasn’t just racism and misogyny, either,” she writes. “A lot of it had to do with the fact that I was playing an MTA worker, as though that was something I should be ashamed of.
I’d tried to fight back — I was a comic — I was used to someone heckling me, so for every piece of bullshit on Twitter I had a reply.” Jones ended up deleting her Twitter account for 24 hours because the online harassment was so bad and because “there had been multiple attempts to hack me.” Jark Dorsey was the CEO of Twitter at the time and sent a tweet to Jones telling her to DM him.
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