Jenny Slate on Stand-Up, SNL, ‘Big Mouth,’ and More

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Interviews, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Tv, Movies, Film

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jenny Slate has never been a traditional stand-up comic. And after a lengthy hiatus that followed her 2019 Netflix special ‘Stage Fright’ and included both a global pandemic and the birth of her daughter, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get up in front of an audience again. “I didn’t have a system in place for how to get back up on stage. I didn’t know how to do that,” she says in this episode. But now, as she puts out her latest hour ‘Seasoned Professional’, Slate breaks down how she made her way back in front of the mic and why she decided to get so intimately personal in the special. Slate reflects on how her one unfortunate season as a ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast member has informed the rest of her career, from finding the right kind of community on projects like ‘Kroll Show’ and ‘Bob’s Burgers’ to learning how to make her own unlikely success with ‘Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.’ And she discusses what it was like to pass the torch of her mixed race character on ‘Big Mouth’ to Ayo Edebiri, why she’s not sure ‘Obvious Child,’ her comedy film about abortion, would hit viewers in the same way 10 years later, and a lot more.

This episode was originally published on February 21, 2024.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast. So here's the deal. I'm
0:11.5	recording this intro before Election Day. You are listening to it after Election Day. All I can
0:17.8	really think about right now is Election day. So what we decided to do
0:21.6	this week is revisit my conversation with an old friend that has almost nothing to do with politics
0:27.2	and is mostly just a nice distracting chat about very silly comedy. Jenny Slate has been one of the
0:33.2	funniest people I've known since we were in college together back in the early 2000s.
0:37.7	We talked earlier this year, just as she was putting out her really wonderful stand-up special,
0:42.8	seasoned professional. But we also talked a lot about the rest of her career, including
0:46.9	SNL, Kroll Show, Big Mouth, Marcel DeShel with shoes on, and obvious child.
0:52.8	She also has a brand new book of essays out called Lifeform that I highly recommend
0:58.6	checking out as well.
1:00.5	Before we get into our talk, let's listen to a clip from Season Professional that really
1:05.6	highlights her unique comedic point of view.
1:09.4	I like to be positive. One thing that I really like about myself,
1:13.6	um,
1:14.6	is that I feel that as a living thing,
1:18.6	I'm like very in tune with my like mammal rhythms.
1:21.6	Like even as like a young, young, young person,
1:24.6	I was like, oh, like, I don't know,
1:26.6	like, do you know that feeling
1:28.6	like when you can tell that you're about to pass away?
1:35.1	It's just like a deep still knowing you're like, oh, I'm about to pass.
	...

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