Leslie Jones Adds Her Thoughts About the Lack of Black Women on ‘SNL’

Leslie Jones was on Saturday Night Live for five seasons, between 2014 and 2019. In that time, she made an indelible mark on the show. The “Naked and Afraid: Celebrity Edition” and “Leslie Jones Wants to Play Donald Trump” are two of my favorites from her repertoire. Since her exit from SNL, Jones has been a host at the Olympics for NBC, the game show Supermarket Sweep and multiple award shows; a guest host for Kimmel and The Daily Show; and has performed at numerous comedy festivals.

Now she’s promoting her special Life Part 2, which premieres on Friday, October 24th on Peacock. On The Daily Beast’s podcast The Last Laugh, Jones opened up about her time on SNL, her life after the show and that whole issue of it once again featuring zero Black women in the cast.

Jones was hired first as a staff writer the last time the show was under fire for not having any Black women in the cast. About that latter — and most important subject — Jones told The Daily Beast that Lorne Michaels has a lot of different responsibilities at once.

“You know, me and Lorne talked about this a lot,” Jones told the Beast. “It’s really hard to run that show. Lorne literally has to be a magician. He has to make people in Cali laugh, and he has to make people in Omaha laugh — at the same thing. And I don’t think they get to see as many Black women as they need to see.”

She acknowledged though, that it’s no excuse for there to be no Black women on the show. But Jones also said it might take more time to recruit Black women for SNL — and that that time needs to be a priority. 

“I would want them to start taking more time to do it,” Jones explained. “Because it does take a little bit more effort to find a Black woman cast member, to me, than it does a white woman cast member. I hate to say it that way, but you have to go and search for them. And they are out there. There are so many women I could send them, and I do. I go, ‘Hey, look at this girl. Hey, look at this girl.’ I send them stuff all the time.”

Jones speculated that it was as much of a surprise to SNL as it was for the public that Ego Nwodim would be leaving the show. “I don’t think they expected Ego to leave, but that’s the first thing I said when I went up there,” Jones said. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, there’s no Black women on the cast.’ I was like, ‘Are they gonna go back to the Black men playing the Black women?’”

On how they’re going to tackle a full season without a Black woman in the cast, Jones predicted they likely won’t: “I wouldn’t be surprised if later on this season they add a Black woman.”

You can listen to the entire interview here.