Jenny Slate: ‘Seasoned Professional’
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2024
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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, with her new hour ‘Seasoned Professional’ set to premiere this Friday, Feb. 23 on Amazon Prime Video, 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 as ‘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.
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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. You may know Jenny |
| 0:10.6 | Slate from films like Obvious Child, animated shows like Bob's Burgers, or the role for which she |
| 0:16.5 | still says she is recognized most often, Mona Lisa Sapperstine, on Parks and Rec. |
| 0:23.5 | Daddy, someone set a fire in your car because you took too long and I got bored. |
| 0:28.8 | Money, please. |
| 0:30.8 | Oh, no, no, there's no money. |
| 0:33.1 | Oh, my bad. No problem. |
| 0:35.5 | That's fine. |
| 0:36.8 | I'll just destroy this office. Oh, hey bad, no problem. Oh, okay. That's fine. I'll just destroy this office. |
| 0:38.3 | Oh, hey! |
| 0:39.3 | Money, please. |
| 0:41.3 | Money, please. |
| 0:44.3 | I bet. |
| 0:47.3 | Give her some money. |
| 0:49.3 | It's easier. |
| 0:50.3 | Of course, there was a time when Jenny was pretty much only known as that SNL cast member who was fired from the show after accidentally dropping an F-bomb during a live sketch, a narrative that she has always maintained is simplistic and kind of ridiculous. |
| 1:07.8 | That was 15 years ago, and in the time since, Jenny has proven she is so much |
| 1:13.2 | more than that one moment. She wrote a book of essays called Little Weirds. She was part of the |
| 1:18.7 | Oscar-nominated team that made Marcel the Shell with shoes on, and this week, her utterly |
| 1:24.3 | unique comedic voice is on brilliant display in an excellent new stand-up |
| 1:28.4 | special called Seasoned Professional, which premieres this Friday, February 23rd, on Amazon Prime |
| 1:34.8 | Video. |
... |
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