Leslie Jones Recalls ‘Ghostbusters’ Pay Disparity and Racist Backlash
When it comes to movie reboots, fans of the original works always have strong opinions. It’s very hard to do a reboot right in the eyes of the majority of fans because it can never live up to the original movie. That hasn’t stopped Hollywood from rebooting every piece of intellectual property under the sun. Back in 2016, Paul Feig teamed up with a cast of talented ladies to reboot Ghostbusters and, to no one’s surprise, a host of angry trolls review-bombed the film and sent a ton of vitriolic comments to the cast—and more specifically, Leslie Jones.
Jones has revealed, through her new memoir, that the backlash—most of which was race related—almost broke her spirit, and that she was almost unfairly compensated for her work in the film.
Jones faced racist backlash and pay inequity in Ghostbusters
In an exclusive excerpt from her memoir Leslie F*cking Jones: A Memoir published by Rolling Stone, Jones recalls encountering a male journalist who demanded she and her co-stars explain why they made Ghostbusters when, to him, the movie itself wasn’t worth it.
This experience seemed to mimic the online harassment and abuse the film was receiving before it even premiered. And while the film as a whole was being trashed, Jones was the one cast member who received the majority of the backlash, both for being a woman and being Black.
“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,” Jones wrote, “Worst of all, of course, was that one of the lead characters was a Black woman. For some men this was the final straw.”
Jones recalled how she tried to combat the trolls using her usual style of humor, but the hate was so bad and violently ugly that she had to take down her Twitter account eight days after Ghostbusters premiered. While her account was back up the next day and now has a security team attached to it, Jones was just floored by the amount of people who would harass her for being in a movie.
“I cried not because I was being bullied,” Jones wrote, “but because this is our world and because I can’t believe anyone would do this shit to someone, anyone, for working. This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that? The world was not as rosy as I’d hoped it was. But none of that shit was about me.”
The comedian also noted that Jason Reitman, the son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan and director of the recent reboot Ghostbusters: Afterlife, helped fuel the fire that burned Jones and her castmates. During an appearance on Bill Burr’s podcast, Reitman talked about the 2016 version of the movie and said, “We are, in every way, trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans.” Reitman did try to walk back his words on Twitter but, to Jones, the damage was done; he was basically endorsing the people who hated on 2016’s Ghostbusters.
And it wasn’t just the racist and misogynistic backlash that made working on Ghostbusters a less-than-stellar experience—it was also the fact that Jones had to fight tooth and nail to be paid what she was worth.
Jones explained how she almost walked away from the project, writing, “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 muthafucka,’ 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 shit, as though I hadn’t had decades of a successful career already.”
To say that Jones would’ve “blown up” because of Ghostbusters is a bit laughable as she already had an impressive 20 years in stand-up comedy and, if anything, her being cast in Saturday Night Live is what skyrocketed her to fame. Not paying someone for their hard work is disgusting. Good on Jones for fighting back.
Though Jones went through a lot while working on Ghostbusters, it seems like she’s come out the other side stronger and with a lot more funny material to share, which is always a win.
(feature image: Sony Pictures)
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