Leslie Jones “Got Paid Way Less” Than Her 2016 ‘Ghostbusters’ Co-Stars Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig: “My First Offer Was For $67,000”

Leslie Jones opened up about the trauma she endured while filming the 2016 all-female reboot of Ghostbusters.

Rolling Stone released an excerpt from the actress and comedian’s new book, Leslie F*cking Jones: A Memoir, that revealed the backlash she received for starring in Paul Feig‘s remake led by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and herself.

The excerpt opened up at a European press junket for the film, where a journalist said, “I DON’T LIKE this movie and you’ve got five minutes to prove to me that it is worth watching,” per Jones’ telling.

She explained how even before the film debuted in theaters, it “had been the subject of intense online abuse,” noting that it was “no surprise that [she] was the one who got most of the hate.”

“For a start, sad keyboard warriors living in their mothers’ basements hated the fact that this hallowed work of perfect art now featured—gasp! horror! — women in the lead roles,” she wrote. “Worst of all, of course, was that one of the lead characters was a Black woman. For some men this was the final straw.”

Jones was not only battling oppressive forces online, but also on set, revealing that she “got paid way less than Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig.”

“No knock on them, but my first offer was to do that movie for $67,000,” she wrote. “I had to fight to get more (in the end I got $150K), but the message was clear: ‘This is gonna blow you  up—after this, you’re made for life,’ all that kind of shit, as though I hadn’t had decades of a successful career already. And in the end, all it made for me was heartache and one big-ass controversy.”

However, Jones highlighted that “it wasn’t just racism and misogyny either.”

“A lot of it had to do with the fact that I was playing an MTA worker, as though that was something I should be ashamed of,” she said, referring to New York City’s  Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s public transportation.

After attempting to fight back Twitter trolls who ruthlessly slammed the film, she took her account down in 2016, posting the following before she did so: “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this ’cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the shit I got today . . . wrong.”

Jones elaborated on the awful and disturbing things being sent to her, asking in her memoir, “Why are people being so evil to each other? How can you sit and type ‘I want to kill you.’ Who does that?”

She also discussed in the memoir the “unforgivable” comments made by Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman. While promoting his 2021 remake, he told Bill Burr on his podcast, “We are, in every way, trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans.”

While she acknowledged that he later “tried to walk it back,” she noted that “the damage was done.”

Ghostbusters is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.