“Saturday Night Live” alum Leslie Jones seems to be involved in a protracted beef with standup circuit stalwart Anthony Jeselnik — which blew up spectacularly at a comedy club earlier this week.
Jeselnik said on his podcast Wednesday that he and another comic — whom he didn’t name — have hated each other for years, adding that he thinks the bad blood may have started at LA’s Comedy Store when Jeselnik refused to give up his stage time when they asked for it.
And he said that the feud reared its head at a different LA club where he was headlining this week — after the comic in question showed up unannounced and asked management to go onstage “for five to ten minutes” before him.
“Within five minutes [of their set], I understand what has happened to me,” he said on the “Jeselnik and Rosenthal Vanity Project,” adding, “They are not doing [five to ten minutes] and that they are going to go as long as they can, strictly to f–k with me — strictly to big-time me.”
Jeselnik said that management at the event, Comedy at the Whitley, told him the anonymous comic had even refused to introduce him before his set.
“The exact phrase was, ‘They don’t think they can introduce you with enthusiasm,'” he said, adding, “Which means that not only am I getting bumped, but I don’t get to go next. Someone else has to go after that [so they can introduce me onstage]. So I’m going almost an hour later.”
Jeselnik said that the comic started kidding around with the audience — known as doing crowd work — to drag out their set even more. So he returned his appearance fee to the club and left.
Meanwhile, a Reddit user solved the mystery of the comic’s identity.
“Everyone saw Jeselnik at the venue while walking in so we knew he was there,” user BigStrongCiderGuy wrote on the social media site, “Leslie Jones [was] a surprise guest in the middle [of the show]. She does some material for the first 15 minutes, big red light comes on [to signal the end of her time], then she just starts doing crowd work for the next 25 minutes.”
They added that after two more acts, they figured Jeselnik wasn’t going to be headlining the show after all, and went to ask a member of club staff what happened.
“First she says Jeselnik had an emergency and had to leave, then tells me the above story,” they wrote.
Reps for Jeselnik and Jones didn’t get back to us.