Leslie Jones has become one of the biggest names in comedy in recent years thanks to her work on projects like Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters. As it turns out, however, she got off to a pretty rough start in her early years of comedy. Although she was lucky enough to open for Jamie Foxx for her second performance ever, she apparently bombed pretty hard. Luckily, Jamie Foxx (whose killer sense of humor cannot be denied) had some fantastic advice for her. Jones recounted the experience, saying this:
Then I just got Jamie in a corner, and I was like, 'Yo, how do I do this? How do I be like you? How do I get there?' He was like, 'You're like 19. You have nothing. You have no stories, you have no life. Go live. Go have some bad jobs. Go have some good jobs. Go get your heart broken. Go break some hearts. Because you have no material right now.' And that's what I did. And I got a gang of material now. I lived!
According to Jamie Foxx, Leslie Jones just needed some life experiences before she could bring the laughs to a crowd of people. Jones shared the story during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and I'm glad it didn't end after "You have nothing" and "you have no stories." The advice was sounding pretty harsh up until the reveal that Foxx was advising her to go out and live her life to get some material worth joking about.
Well, Jamie Foxx's advice clearly did wonders for Leslie Jones' career. She may not have made it in showbiz when she was still a teenager, but she's certainly made it now. Jones just scored an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a comedy category for her work on Saturday Night Live. She's up against some tough competition, including fellow SNL actresses Kate McKinnon and Vanessa Bayer. Kathryn Hahn and Judith Light of Transparent are in the running as well, along with Anna Chlumsky of Veep.
Whether Leslie Jones wins the Emmy or not, she's not going anywhere any time soon. She'll be back as an SNL cast member in the 2017-2018, and she's doing a little campaigning to appear in the next Deadpool movie. If that's not enough, she's a hilarious presence on social media. Her live-tweets of the Olympics and Captain America: Civil War were worth plenty of laughs, and it's always worth checking to see if she's posted Twitter commentary on the latest Game of Thrones episodes. Hopefully she'll continue to bring her comedic chops to the big and small screens for years to come.
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