In this week’s “Just for Variety,” Leslie Jones opens up about her reluctance to get a COVID vaccine.
Welcome to this week’s “Just For Variety“ Leslie Jones didn’t exactly run to get a COVID vaccine. “When it first came out I was like, ‘I’m not taking that shit,’” the former “Saturday Night Live” star tells me. “They’re just going to come up with a potion and we’re supposed to take that shit?… I was like, ‘I’m going to wait until the last batch and then maybe somebody could talk me into it.” But then she spoke to her aunt’s friend, a biologist working in COVID research. “She was like, ‘This is very serious. Please get vaccinated,’” Jones says. But she still wasn’t ready — that is, until she was asked to host the MTV Movie & TV Awards, airing live from Los Angeles on May 16: “I was like, ‘I gotta be sage so let me just go bite the bullet.” She says she’s going to avoid pandemic jokes: “I hope we make it a party,” Jones says. “I just want to bring joy to people. Everybody is going to be hearing about me and about me dating. I’m just trying to have joy. I just want everybody to laugh their ass off.” She also wants winners to keep their acceptance speeches short. She says she wasn’t a fan of the unusually long thank-you remarks at this year’s Oscars. “And why did they all look so scared?” Jones asks. “They looked like hostages with someone standing on the side with a gun or something. When it gets down to Glenn Close doing ‘Da Butt’ being the most exciting thing, we have lost ourselves. I’m not mad at it, but it just shouldn’t have been the most exciting thing that happened that night.” With lockdown restrictions easing, Jones has returned to stand up. “The first time I hit that stage, I didn’t know that was part of my medicine of life,” she says. “I was like, ‘Damn!’ I slept like a baby that night. I didn’t know that was an element of what was missing out of my life.” As for the dating life we’ll hear more about on during the awards on Sunday, Jones says, “I want a guy like the house I just bought — solid! You know what I’m saying? I don’t have to replace any window frames or fixtures.” SIGHTINGS: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban and their daughters celebrating Mother’s Day at the Hotel Bel-Air, as were Angelina Jolie and her family.… Stars of the “Gossip Girl” reboot, including Evan Mock, Thomas Doherty, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Zion Moreno and Savannah Smith, dining at NYC’s L’Avenue at Saks. Two years ago, Jaden Smith launched the I Love You food truck to distribute food to the homeless in Los Angeles’ Skid Row area. Now, the actor-musician and philanthropist will open an I Love You restaurant. “It’s for homeless people to get free food,” says Smith, whose 501CTHREE.
