Winter Olympics: Leslie Jones Has Strong Response to Pushback Over Commentary on Games

Leslie Jones has had enough of the criticism over her videos and tweets about the Winter Olympics. The 54-year-old comedian and actress went to Instagram Monday morning to announce that the Beijing Games will likely be “my last Olympics I live tweet.” Jones has provided commentary on previous Winter and Summer Olympic games over the last few years. 

“I’m tired of fighting the folks who don’t want me to do it,” Jones wrote in the post. “They block my videos and they get folks who think they can do it like me. And I’m tired of fighting them.” Jones added. “I love the athletes and they love me doing it. And I know ya’ll love it. But now it’s gotten too hard. And no one is fighting for or with me. Soooo I guess I’ll leave it to the professionals. But thank you for all the love.”

In a previous post, Jones had a message for NBC Sports for her commentary. “I have watched Olympics since I could walk lol,” Jones wrote. “Me and my dad. So this is from my heart. Y’all should be asking [NBC Sports] why they don’t see that. And think they can replace me with just anyone. Again not saying I was first just saying it’s frustrating.”

NBC does have strict rules when it comes to sharing footage from the Olympics. Last year, Jamaican Olympic Gold medalist Elaine Thompson-Herah posted videos of her own races last summer on Instagram and they were removed because she didn’t own the rights to the footage. “Rights Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) have the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic Games,” the International Olympics Committee told Reuters last year, per NBC New York. “This includes distribution on social media, where athletes are invited to share the content provided by the RHBs on their accounts but cannot post competition content natively. Should that occur, the removal of such content from social media platforms happens automatically.”

Jones was on Saturday Night Live from 2014 to 2019. She has also appeared in various films such as Trainwreck, Ghostbusters and Coming 2 America. Jones is also the host of the game show Supermarket Sweep which was brought back for the fourth time since it began airing in 1965. Her commentary for the Olympics began in 2016 when the Summer Olympics were in Rio de Janeiro.