The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot that starred Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones was a target for online harassment that was very well known at the time. But in her new memoir, Jones opens up about just what she had to go through as part of the film. And it turns out it’s all even worse than we thought, as Jones specifically suffered actual death threats for being in the comedy movie.
Leslie Jones at one point took down her Twitter account as a result of the harassment, but in her new memoir, an excerpt of which was recently published in Rolling Stone, she reveals that the reason for her doing that was to deal with multiple attempts to hack her account. She had even been in direct contact with Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey about the issue, and people had been put in place to monitor the account. Jones says she was sent actual death threats, something she still has trouble understanding. Jones said…
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? I was being sent films of being hanged, of white guys jacking off on my picture, saying, ‘You fucking n—–. We going to kill you.’ Why are people being so evil to each other? How can you sit and type ‘I want to kill you.’ Who does that?
It’s hard to argue that people getting this angry about a movie is more than ridiculous. There seemed to be a group of people who felt Ghostbusters, was some sort of unimpeachable piece of art and not a silly movie about professional exterminators. There’s no movie that should elicit death threats for its cast but somehow there are people who thought this was ok.
Jones also takes Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman to task in the book. When his Ghostbusters legacy sequel went into production he said the movie was going to give the franchise back to the fans. Jones called him out at the time for the comment, which seemed to be directed at exactly the sort of people who had become filled with rage over the all-female reboot. Reitman later walked back the comment, voicing support for the reboot film.
It turns out Leslie Jones’ issues with Ghostbusters weren’t limited to off-the-set either. She says she was initially offered only $67,000 for her role, far less than her co-stars. She eventually was paid $150K but only after fighting for the raise.
Jones does have positive memories from Ghostbusters, she says the experience of filming in Boston was great, that the crew, as well as the locals, were always friendly, and she and co-star Kate McKinnon apparently became good friends on the set. So it wasn’t all bad. Still, with the backlash that we’ve seen Halle Bailey deal with on The Little Mermaid and Rachel Zegler is currently experiencing regarding Snow White, it’s clear the terrible behavior is still happening, and we have to wonder if what they’re dealing with is much worse than we realize.