The business of comedy — much like acting, writing, and a host of other professions that seem like a blast, but are in actuality insanely difficult — is hard to break into. Everyone wants it — whether that it refers to fame, success, money, what-have-you — and so setting one’s self apart from the masses of wannabes in the come-up years might just be the hardest part. Ultimately, to make it in the carnivorous business of show, an undiscovered talent needs an advocate. Nobody becomes super-famous without a few lucky breaks, a whole lot of hustle, and someone with a little more clout than them fighting in their corner.
One of the most fascinating details from The New Yorker‘s massive new profile by Andrew Marantz on comedienne supreme Leslie Jones (a piece bursting with fascinating details, from backstage anecdotes from the Ghostbusters set to Jones’ earliest days as a hungry stand-up) concerns the performer’s dynamic with Chris Rock. One of the most popular black comics to have ever picked up a mic, Rock has always been an ardent supporter of untapped performers of color. (In the profile, Rock drops the real-as-hell quote, “Black women have the hardest gig in show business. You hear Jennifer Lawrence complaining about getting paid less because she’s a woman—if she was black, she’d really have something to complain about.”) The New Yorker profile reveals that Rock and Jones had a chance encounter at storied venue the Comedy Store after Jones had performed a set, during which Rock added her to a running list on his iPhone labeled “Funny People.” (Note: Chris Rock, if you’re reading this, please post the rest of that list online. We’re always hard up for good new comedy routines!)
In 2013, when the time had long since come for venerable sketch institution Saturday Night Live to wrangle a black female comic to fill a glaring hole in the cast, it was Rock who got Jones in the room. The profile relates that Rock told creator/overlord Lorne Michaels, “She’s the funniest woman I know,” and just like that, she was in. (Though that audition really only led to a writing gig, not the on-screen slot, but Jones would not be denied and took the program by storm anyway.)
An “S.N.L.” audition is notoriously tough: the studio is dark and cavernous, and the producers sit silently near the back. Jones recalled, “I got onstage, took the mike out of the stand, and went, ‘Nope. Y’all are gonna have to move up to where I can see you.’ And Lorne got his ass up and moved.”
She did not attempt impersonations or funny voices; she did her act. She opened with an autobiographical anecdote about being a gangly ten-year-old who longed to be a petite gymnast. “I wrote it in 1987,” she told me. “It’s the closest I’ve come to a perfect joke, but it took years before I was talented enough to perform it.” The joke is an allegory about defying parental and societal expectations, and it includes two cartwheels. I saw her perform it at Carolines three nights in a row, and it earned an applause break every time.
After the “S.N.L.” audition, Jones flew back to L.A. and waited. A week later, she heard the news: the job had gone to Sasheer Zamata, a twenty-seven-year-old improviser and sketch performer at U.C.B., who is Disney-princess pretty. Jones said, “I understood why they gave it to her—she’d been doing sketch for a long time, she’s a natural fit—but at the same time I was fucking pissed.” The next day, she got a call from Michaels, who asked if she would take a job as a writer. “I went, ‘You know I have no fucking idea how to do that, right?’ ” Still, she accepted the offer and moved to Harlem.
The whole profile is a wonderful piece about one of comedy’s most exhilarating ascendant talents, a perfect way to kill a few minutes in the middle of your workday.
