'This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that?' Jones wrote
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Comedian and actress Leslie Jones, who starred in the 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot, wrote in a memoir about the backlash against her role in the iconic movie series, per a new report.
Jones claimed that she experienced "racism and misogyny" around her role in the 2016 reboot of "Ghostbusters."
"It wasn’t just racism and misogyny, either," Jones reportedly wrote in her memoir, according to Variety. "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 bulls--t on Twitter I had a reply."
Jones also recounted receiving "death threats" for her role in the movie.
Comedian and actress Leslie Jones who starred in the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot wrote in a memoir about the backlash against her role in the iconic movie series. (Screenshot/YouTube)
"I can’t believe anyone would do this s--t to someone, anyone, for working," she wrote. "This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that?"
Some of the threats were also sexual in nature, Jones wrote.
"I was being sent films of being hanged, of white guys jacking off on my picture, saying, ‘You f---ing n-----. We going to kill you,'" she wrote. "Why are people being so evil to each other? How can you sit and type ‘I want to kill you.’ Who does that?"
Jones also called out director Jason Reitman for his comments in 2021 that he was trying "trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans." (Vacasa)
Jones also called out director Jason Reitman for his comments in 2021 that he was "trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans." Jones said this was an "unforgivable" comment because, she explained, Reitman's statement "was a pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us for making an all-female film."
Reitman tried to walk back those comments in a post on X, then known as Twitter, in 2019. "That came out wrong!" Reitman wrote. "I have nothing but admiration for Paul and Leslie and Kate and Melissa and Kristen and the bravery with which they made Ghostbusters 2016. They expanded the universe and made an amazing movie!"
Jones said that she was initially offered $67,000 for her part in the movie.
"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 muthaf---a,'" she wrote. "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 s--t, as though I hadn’t had decades of a successful career already. And in the end, all it made for me was heartache and one big-a-- controversy."
Reitman and Jones did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
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