Comedian Whitney Cummings interviews guests (friends, comics, celebs, experts, weirdos) every week. Known for her stand-up comedy specials for HBO and Netflix, Comedy Central Roasts, and multiple television series and films, Whitney has a lot of questions for a lot of different kinds of people.
She also has opinions. And a robot. The series has featured the likes of David Oyelowo, Paris Hilton, Amanda Knox, Dr. David Sinclair, and Dave Grohl. Subscribe to hear interviews that are always interesting and never too long.
In this week’s episode of the Good for You podcast, comedian/actress Leslie Jones and Whitney talk behind the scenes of SNL, being successful dating, and porn dick. Her new book LESLIE F*CKING JONES is out now!
This Week’s Special Guest:
Leslie Jones: An American comedian and actress who was a cast member and writer on Saturday Night Live from 2014 to 2019 and currently the host of Supermarket Sweep. Jones has been a featured performer at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal and the Aspen Comedy Festival. In 2010, her one-hour comedy special, Problem Child, was broadcast on Showtime. Jones starred in Ghostbusters (2016) as Patty Tolan. In 2017 and 2018, Jones was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Saturday Night Live.
Jones attended high school in Lynwood, California, where she also played basketball; her father suggested that she play the sport because she is six feet tall. Jones attended Chapman University on a basketball scholarship. While initially unsure of what she wanted to study, Jones worked as a disc jockey at the student radio station, KNAB, and contemplated playing professional basketball overseas.
Jones began doing stand-up comedy in college in 1987, when a friend signed her up for a “Funniest Person on Campus” contest. After winning the contest, Jones left school for Los Angeles. She performed at comedy clubs while working day jobs at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles and UPS to make ends meet. Comedians Mother Love and Dave Chappelle encouraged her to move to New York City to hone her craft for two years, where she appeared on BET’s ComicView before returning to Los Angeles. She performed at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, but received unfavorable reviews of her shows there. She then went out on tour, opening for Jamie Foxx where she was booed by his audience. Feeling as though she lacked experience, Jones stopped performing for three years. Fearing that she would only ever be known in African American circles, around 2010 she began to stop playing so-called “black clubs” One night, Chris Rock saw her perform and gave her name to several of “the biggest managers in comedy” all of whom “didn’t get it”. Rock would eventually help Jones get a job at Saturday Night Live.
In 2008, Jones was part of Katt Williams’s It’s Pimpin’ Pimpin’ tour.
Checkout previous episodes of the GOOD FOR YOU podcast featuring Kelsey Cook, Leah Lamarr, Erik Griffin, Jud Apatow, and many more HERE
