Leslie Jones talks about her time in Saturday night live.
The 56-year-old actress and comedian served as a writer and cast member of SNL from 2014 to 2019. Her performances earned her two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
During a recent appearance on NPR to promote his new memoirs Leslie Damn JonesLeslie spoke about how being a black woman affected her experience in SNL.
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Leslie commented on how the show limited the scope of her performances and described how she believed her race played a role in that.
“They take that one thing [about you] and they squeeze it out,” he said. “They squeeze it because that is the machine. So whatever it is that I’m giving them that they’re so happy about, they feel like it has to be like this all the time or something. So I was like a caricature of myself. …Either I’m trying to love white boys or beat them up, or I’m being loud.”
Leslie also commented how others SNL Cast members were also treated with limitations as a way of serving a larger “machine.”
“I was talking to another cast member who retired and they said, ‘But to be fair, that’s how everyone does it.’ Not just black people,’” she stated. “I looked back and thought, ‘Oh, that’s right, Taran Killam!’ Taran wanted to do a lot of other things, but they would only have him in those very masculine things. [roles] and singing and stuff and I said, ‘Oh! This is a machine.’”
Leslie acknowledged that executive producer Lorne Michaels was under pressure to deliver a product that would please those around him.
“I always thought he was the puppet master,” he explained. “So he has to make the cast happy, he has to make the writers happy, he has to make the WGA happy, he has to make NBC happy. Then he has to make a family in Omaha, Nebraska, who is watching the show, happy. Imagine the threads that have to run towards it. So it is a machine that has to work.”
If you haven’t seen it, Leslie Jones recently spoke out about the racist hate she received when she starred in the Ghostbusters Redo.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn