The standup stole scenes in Parks and Recreation and won plaudits for Obvious Child. Now she is stretching herself further with an Oscar-nominated passion project that even divorce couldn’t derail
It is 9am in Los Angeles and Jenny Slate is smiling – or is that grimacing? – over Zoom. When I ask how she is, the comedian and actor is brutally honest. “I’ve been up since about 4.30am with my two-year-old,” she explains. Slate adds that she and her husband went out at around 7am to get coffee, thinking a change in location might soothe their wailing daughter. It did, but by this point it was too late for Slate. “I was so tired when we got there that I just started to silently – not sob – but just leak tears out of tired eyes … But I think I’m all right! I didn’t, like, walk into the canyon or anything …”
Slate’s brand of openness doesn’t just extend to telling strangers about the trials of parenting a toddler; a radical kind of honesty has long permeated her stage and screen work. After graduating from Columbia University, the Milton, Massachusetts-born comic spent years honing her craft as a standup in “shitty dive bars” across New York. From the start, her comedy was intimate and revelatory. “I’ve always just shared really personal stories,” she says, “many of them about my body.”