Jenny Slate, 35, is an American comedian, actor and author. The middle of three sisters, with a ceramicist mother and poet father, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. While at Columbia University, Slate performed standup and improv. Moving to Los Angeles with then-husband, director Dean Fleischer-Camp (they’ve since amicably divorced), Slate joined Saturday Night Live in 2009, but accidentally swore in her first episode and was fired after one season. A stop-motion short animation made with Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, became a viral hit, leading to New York Times bestseller children’s books and plans for a feature-length movie.

With her distinctive voice, Slate featured in Zootopia and The Secret Life of Pets. On television, she appeared in Parks and Recreation, Married and Girls. Her performance in Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, playing a comic navigating a pregnancy termination, won her awards including the Critics’ Choice award for best actress in a comedy. Slate stars in another Robespierre film, Landline, due out in the summer. In her latest film, Gifted, she plays a teacher who becomes involved with a man (Chris Evans) caring for his maths prodigy niece (Mckenna Grace).

What attracted you to Gifted?

I’m looking to do things I haven’t done before and sometimes that means picking more traditional projects. It’s the first time I’ve been in a proper studio movie. I often play loud, outwardly funny characters and I’m not interested in playing a character that’s a boring place-holder. I wanted to make sure that, if I was going to play a kind girl-next-door teacher, I could still bring my creativity to it.

Who were your favourite actors, growing up?

I liked Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, but I especially loved to watch women. Ruth Gordon, Madeline Kahn, Carol Burnett, Amy Irving, Rosalind Russell, Gilda Radner, Julia Roberts, Michelle Pfeiffer, Whoopi Goldberg. It was quite broad, not just comedy. I loved women who seemed like they couldn’t be replaced by anybody else.

As a child, were you nurtured creatively?

For sure – art was integrated in our lives. Old movies, reading… my parents didn’t care what profession we went into – it was about education and making us open-minded, free-thinking women. The focus was on kindness too. My father always says that you shouldn’t cause other people damage – lying, being greedy, being aggressive, all those things.

You started in standup and improv – are you extrovert or one of those masochistic introverts who force themselves to do it?

I get stage fright, but I’m an extrovert, I love performing. Doing improv in college was just fun – less pressure than going to a party. This crazy energy would just go through me…

Are you a Type A personality – driven?

I don’t think I’m Type A or driven. I have an appetite for my personal pleasures – for doing art and being an artist. I wake up every day with an appetite for being an artist, just as I have an appetite for food. It’s part of my identity.

Does “driven” sound too cold?

“Driven” does sound cold – it evokes the notion of having to make gross decisions. I wouldn’t do anything to succeed. My daily life is about my career but it’s also about being happy. I know that no matter how successful I become, I won’t be happy if I don’t have personal relationships and daily pleasures that really feed me.

What do you think now about the Saturday Night Live swearing/firing?

It does bother me to have to talk about something that was one second of my life a decade ago. It was embarrassing, devastating, humiliating, a bummer of a mistake. But since I made that tiny mistake, so much has happened. It feels like, if I were a guy, I’d have to talk about it a little bit, but, because I’m a woman, I have to talk about it for ever. I want to honour all the good things I’ve done on purpose, instead of the stupid thing I did by mistake 10 years ago.

You’ve said that the SNL firing made you suffer stage fright so badly that you had to have hypnosis.

Performing was always an innocent, energetic joy for me but once I was fired, I got a specific type of stage fright – a narrative inside of me: “These people don’t like you and they don’t want you to be here. And whatever that magic is that clicks in when you’re on stage, it’s not going to happen tonight.” My entire self-worth was challenged. I didn’t want to quit standup just because I got fired from one job, so I fought against it. I went to a hypnotherapist – it sounds crazy, but it worked.

How did Marcel the Shell come about?

My ex-husband [Fleischer-Camp] had to do a project. I sensed that I was going to get fired from SNL and I was depressed – how can I be funny now? Like when you go through a break-up and it’s: “How will I ever love again; how will I ever let someone put their toothbrush in my house again?” My ex-husband is such a beautiful person – he didn’t like to see me distraught. He said: “You’re not on anyone else’s schedule in terms of when you’re allowed to be creative – you can be creative right now.” That’s how the character of Marcel was born. After the weird experience with SNL, it was such a bright spot, such an assertion of my creative voice.

After making Gifted, you had a short-lived relationship with co-star Chris Evans [best known as Captain America]…

You know, I’d really rather not talk about that. I already talked about it a lot.

Are you concerned that you’ve been too open about it?

No, I just said all I had to say and I’d rather not reiterate it because my life is changing and growing. Maybe these things are interesting to the general public but it doesn’t mean that they’re the things I think about every day. It feels as though it’s my responsibility to myself to talk about what’s happening now. Because that’s the real woman who’s there.

Are women in the public eye over-defined by their relationships?

For sure and that’s really irritating. There are so many women spoken about in terms of who their partners are. It’s not the way we should be seeing women or how many women see themselves. My experience does not consist of me reacting to a man. My experience consists of me seeing the world and having a point of view. So yeah, I actively screen against that instinct people have to identify me as someone’s partner or not-someone’s partner or whatever.

What is fame good for?

Fame can be helpful to do good in the world, to spread a message in a specific voice. I have enough people following me on Twitter that if I want to support Planned Parenthood [The US non-profit reproductive healthcare organisation] or say: “We have to impeach our president because he’s a criminal”, I can reach people – that’s wonderful.

Does the artistic community have a responsibility to speak out about President Trump?

Not just the artistic community – everybody should be speaking out because what’s going on is terrifying and despicable. It’s really an emergency.

What about Ivanka Trump – she gets a lot of criticism for being “complicit”?





I think that Ivanka Trump is a fake feminist who will go down in history as someone who really betrayed human beings and who should be ashamed of herself. I’m ashamed of her. I think she’s really gross and her husband [Jared Kushner] as well.

Your breakthrough role was in Obvious Child, which was termed an “abortion romcom”; did this attract criticism from the pro-life lobby?

We never put it out there as an “abortion romcom”. That was how it was labelled. And we don’t call them “pro-life”, we call them “anti-choice” – people who don’t want women to have access to their own reproductive decisions. With Obvious Child, yes, some people didn’t want to see abortion in a movie and some people didn’t want abortion to exist at all. But for the most part, our screenings were full of women and men who wanted to share their stories.

Did doing Obvious Child make you more aware of feminist issues?

For sure. I thought I had a handle on who I wanted to be but that really expanded after conversations with Gillian Robespierre and [producer] Elizabeth Holm and [co-star] Gaby Hoffman. I realised that I’d been a little ignorant – I wanted to educate myself about the female experience.

Slate in her new film, Gifted. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

You appeared in Girls – did it change what television could be?

Without a doubt. I think we’ll look back on Lena Dunham as one of our most important innovators. Lena’s work is inquisitive, thoughtful, joyful. She makes us want to be ourselves and that’s not something that’s necessarily encouraged in young women. She set a new standard.

Your character in Obvious Child jokes about resembling Anne Frank; does being Jewish inform your work?

I’m agnostic, I’m not a practising Jew, but culturally I’m very Jewish. I don’t think that being Jewish informs my work any more than being American, being from Massachusetts or being a woman, but I’m proud of my Jewish heritage. I’m just not at a place in my life any more where it feels appropriate for me to worship a male god, who really wants me to declare that he’s the only one. I don’t believe in it.

You’ve said: “I’m glad I look like myself and didn’t get a nose job to fit in”…

I’m not here to say what other women should be doing with their lives or their bodies – that goes against everything I believe. But it feels dangerous to deny that women look different or that women age. I hope I can connect with people and help them feel that unique beauty is powerful and there are infinite ways to be a person and to be beautiful. It’s not something that only belongs to some – it belongs to everybody.

Do you still do standup?

Whenever I get the chance I still perform [with Gabe Liedman and Max Silvestri]. It’s something I do to reaffirm that I love people and to feel the risk of them accepting or rejecting me. On stage, I’m completely myself and there’s an option for people to say: “I don’t like that!” and for me to reassess and say: “Well, I do!” I’ll never stop doing standup – it feels so natural to me. It goes back to what we were talking about before – the appetite.

Gifted is in cinemas this week