From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You may know my guest, Jenny Slate, from,

let's say, the rambunctious sister of John Ralfio on Parks and Rec, or as the determined wife from House of Lies, or perhaps the world's most self-possessed mollusk on the internet, but you should get to know her. Basically, her first starring role in the film, Obvious Child, which is opening.

Jenny Slate, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, thank you for having me.

And, of course, Obvious Child, directed by Gillian Rose-Pierre, which started as a short.

Explain the differences, if you will, between the short and the feature.

Well, the short, we did it in 2009, and Gillian came and saw me to stand up and then

asked me to do it after seeing that. She'd written it, but the feature was written for me by her,

so it was much more specific to, I guess, what I find funny, because Gillian and I share a sense of humor.

And, you know, when she wrote the short, Donna was just a lot less specific.

And the short was, you know, girl gets dumped, girl gets pregnant.

Donna is a character of somebody who in some ways probably thinks herself as an artist and thinks that her experience is the kind of thing that should be exposed to everybody.

But once her vulnerability comes to the fore because what happens to her in the film, which is she gets pregnant, then suddenly that whole understanding of who she is this sort of artist who makes her art, her life,

is kind of thrown out the window.

Yeah.

I mean, she's not very grand about what she thinks about herself as a performer.

I think she...

But she thinks herself as a performer who has license to, like, use everything.

Yeah, totally.

It's sort of relaxed.

It's not lazy, but at the beginning, I would describe her as somebody who's rather passive. She's not...

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