Leslie Jones to make her Maui debut at MACC on Thursday
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Nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for her stellar work on "Saturday Night Live," comedian Leslie Jones will make her Maui debut at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Thursday, promising her audience, "they're going to be laughing their ass off."
Probably best known for her time at "Saturday Night Live," Jones added that, "people are always surprised when they think they are going to meet the SNL Leslie Jones, which is who I am, but I'm an actual comic. People sometimes believe some movie stars do stand-up just to make money. I'm actually a stand-up, and I am definitely not clean. I'm not saying you're not going to enjoy me, but don't come thinking it's going to be rated PG."
While she has never visited Maui before, her first professional gig was in Hawaii, at the former Reni's nightclub in Pearl City, owned by actor Robert Mosley.
"Roger Mosley had a comedy club that the troops would go to," she recalled. "It was my first professional gig. I got paid $75, but it was a free trip to Hawaii, so I was like, yeah! I always wanted to travel to the other islands, but never got booked over there or either couldn't afford to go. I'm kind of excited because this is the first time I've ever been to any other island."
Wherever she lands at a show venue, Jones likes to pick up on the locations' vibe to compliment her act. "That's why I like to get there early. We always like to walk around and see the city, see what they eat, that type of stuff. I definitely love to do that. That is really going to be fun in Maui."
And she loves interacting with her audience. "I usually spend the first 10 minutes messing with the audience, talking to people," she said. "I love to have fun."
Asked what she thinks distinguishes her from other comedians, she simply responded, "I'm Leslie, Leslie f—— Jones. My reputation precedes me," she added, cracking up.
Jones most loves "making people laugh. You know, the joy of it, giving people a chance to just let off some steam, let them laugh about problems instead of cry about them. I always try to go for the tickle. Have you ever been tickled so hard, you hurt in your gut? That's the tickle. When someone can get you to that, that's artistry."
SNL's Michael Che praised Jones in a New Yorker profile. "She's brutally honest, and she knows how to sell material more convincingly than anyone I can think of," he noted.
It was Chris Rock who suggested SNL hire Jones. In the introduction to her memoir "I'm Leslie F—— Jones," Rock explained how he got her on SNL after producer Lorne Michaels called him seeking new talent. "I said, "You gotta get Leslie Jones! There is nobody like her. She's hilarious."
Initially hired as a writer, during her first appearance on SNL's "Weekend Update" in 2014, she killed it with a brilliant Southern slave routine. It's still hilarious 10 years later. The sketch led to her being hired in the "Ghostbusters" remake.
"When you write comedy, you're supposed to be writing timeless stuff," she said.
"It's like if you watch your favorite comics, like George Carlin or Richard Pryor, you go, oh my God, that's funny right now. They're timeless jokes. It also shows how much that we don't change as a society."
Some of her best bits included a parody of "Naked and Afraid" with "Game of Thrones'" star Peter Dinklage, playing a cleaner in "The Raunchiest Miss Rita," a parody of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" which featured "Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan, and a "Weekend Update" segment, where dressed in a "Handmaid's Tale" red costume, she addressed Alabama's abortion ban.
Among her film roles, in 2021 she was among the cast of "Coming 2 America," starring Eddie Murphy. Entertainment Weekly praised it as a "fun, a lovingly made exercise in nostalgia."
"He was very fun, very nice, very quiet," she said about Murphy. "The thing I liked about him is like little things would make him laugh. He's a comedian at heart and we always laughed on a lot of takes. A lot of things I would say he would just bust out laughing because it's fun. Me, him, Arsenio sitting at the table is just hysterical and fun. Arsenio is just so hilarious."
Known for her humorous cultural and political tweets, she was hired as an NBC correspondent at the 2016 and 2018 Olympics. In November she spent a week as the host of "The Daily Show." She was hilarious. "I enjoyed being able to have a voice," she said. "It was an opportunity to have a big platform I can be funny on,
Interviewed recently by Newsweek, she suggested, "I want to be an interpreter for the nation."
What did she mean by that?
"There's a lot of people who don't understand politics, and I am one of them. It's so many things that I didn't know. When I started working at SNL, there was so much s— I was finding out. And then when we had Trump come, it was just like a whole different dynamic of learning about what politics are and what politicians do. So to me, I felt like whenever they would start talking about it, I would look at them and go, you lost me after the first two sentences. I say you have to put this in a way that people can understand, because if I knew this was going on, I would want to do something about it. I'm a voter. SNL makes politics understandable. And it's not to dumb it down, but make it fun."
The MACC presents comedian Leslie Jones in the Castle Theater on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35, $44, $71, and a limited number of $129 premium seats, plus applicable fees, available at mauiarts.org.