The new Ghostbusters film has been subject to a lot of controversy from its inception. Fronted by funny women Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, the all-female reboot has been getting the backs up of keyboard warriors since it first dared threaten the status quo by changing the gender of fictional paranormal hitmen.

So threatened was the delicate manhood of traditional Ghostbuster fanboys, the original director Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd began talks to make an “all-male counterpart”. As if there weren’t already enough Ghostbuster films in existence. The trailer for the film was the least-liked in YouTube history and reviews so far have been mixed.

Now after the film’s opening, Leslie Jones – who plays Ghostbuster Patty Tolan – has been targeted by racist online trolls. Having received a flurry of insults about her appearance and ethnicity the actress and comedian wrote that she was left in tears and with “a very sad heart” after reading what viewers had to say. Jones began retweeting the abuse she was receiving including a variety of not-very-inventive gorilla-themed gibes:

Afterwards, Leslie tweeted: “I don't know how to feel. I'm numb. Actually numb. I see the words and pics and videos. Videos y'all. Meaning people took time to spew hate,” explaining she had received a video from a man shouting that he hates “n*ggas”.

She added: “All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today...wrong”