JUST NBC THE RACISM! Leslie Jones Says ‘SNL’ Made Her A Caricature Of Herself: “Either I’m Trying To Love On The White Boys Or Beat Up On The White Boys Or I’m Doing Something Loud.”

“They take that one thing [about you] and they wring it,” she says. “They wring it because that’s the machine. So whatever it is that I’m giving that they’re so happy about, they feel like it’s got to be that all the time or something like that. So it was like a caricature of myself. … Either I’m trying to love on the white boys or beat up on the white boys, or I’m doing something loud.”

Jones says a chat on the topic with a former cast member (she didn’t say who) provided additional context.

“I was talking to another cast member that retired and they said ‘But in fairness, that’s how they do all of them. Not just the Black ones,’” Jones says. “I look back and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s right, Taran Killam!’ Taran wanted to do so much other stuff, but they would only have Taran in those very masculine [roles] and singing and stuff and I said, ‘Oh! This is a machine.’”

Jones also says she understands the pressures on executive producer Lorne Michaels to keep “the machine” running smoothly.

“I used to always be like, he’s the puppet master,” she says. “So he has to make the cast happy, has to make the writers happy, he has to make the WGA happy, he has to make NBC happy. Then he has to make a family in Omaha, Nebraska, who’s watching the show happy. Imagine the strings that have to go out to him. So it’s a machine that has to work.”

To be fair, it’s nice of Lorne to give some thought to the one family in Omaha that’s actually tuning in to watch the ancient low-rated late night variety show.

Exit question: Is It Finally Time to Put ‘Saturday Night Live’ to Bed?

NBC’s best option would be to return to their roots and resume showing Johnny Carson reruns at 11:30 on Saturday nights.