Lorne Michaels Breaks Silence on Leslie Jones Twitter Attacks
Lorne Michaels addressed the Twitter attacks against Saturday Night Live cast member/Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I felt terrible that she had to go through it,” he said. “That part was awful. But it’s also fame in the age of social media. The velocity of those attacks and how perspectives change is really difficult to deal with.”
This summer, Jones received numerous hostile Twitter messages over her role in the all-female Ghostbusters reboot. In response, the comic actress met with the site’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, who removed several offending user accounts. “I think no one is prepared for the level of celebrity that comes with being on television and particularly as big a stage as this,” Michael said.
The Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer also addressed several changes for Season 42, including the departure of cast members Jay Pharoah and Taran Killam and frequent SNL host Alec Baldwin’s new recurring role as Donald Trump. “The [Trump] idea came out of a conversation with Tina Fey at some point during the summer,” he said. “Then I mentioned it to Alec, but he’d already committed himself to a movie and [he and wife Hilaria] were about to have their third child. There were a lot of obstacles in the way to working it out. But I just thought he’d be brilliant doing it and I thought he and Kate [McKinnon, as Hillary Clinton] would be a match.”
Saturday Night Live Season 42 premieres October 1st with host Margot Robbie and musical guest the Weekend.
Twitter’s recent ban of a sexist troll was a step in protecting women on the Internet – but we’ve got a long way to go. Watch here.