You wouldn’t expect a memoir with “F*king” in the title to be all unicorns and rainbows.
Thus, it’s no surprise that comedian Leslie Jones’s new memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones, pulls no punches, particularly when it comes to the Ghostbusters reboot she starred in alongside Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, and Melissa McCarthy. Paul Feig directed the film
Years after that movie’s release, Jason Reitman — whose father Ivan directed the original two 1980s Ghostbusters films — released Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), which ignored what Feig’s film established in the franchise.
Jones said in her memoir that Jason Reitman’s comments about her edition of the film series was a “pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us.”
Reitman said that he was “trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans,” on a Bill Burr podcast.
“I’m not making the Juno of Ghostbusters movies,” the Juno director said at the time. “This is gonna be a love letter to Ghostbusters…. I want to make a movie for my fellow Ghostbusters fans.”
Reitman’s tried to walk back the comments after backlash on his remarks. He said on Twitter that what he said “came out wrong” and he thought the Jones all-female version was “amazing.”
Jones wasn’t buying it in her memoir. “The damage was done” by the original remarks, she wrote.
“Bringing up the idea of giving the movie ‘back to the fans’ was a pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us for making an all-female [movie],” wrote Jones.
Jones said she “got taken through the ringer” of negativity over her Ghostbusters role, noting many racist and sexist comments.
“Why are people being so evil to each other? How can you sit and type ‘I want to kill you.’ Who does that?” she wrote of the “… Sad keyboard warriors living in their mother’s basements hated the fact that this hallowed work of perfect art now featured — gasp! horror! — women in the lead roles,” wrote Jones. “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 deactivated her Twitter account soon after the film’s release, tweeting at the time: “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this ’cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the s— I got today … wrong.”