“When I was starting out as an actor, I wish I had been exposed to things that had suited my tastes more. I didn’t understand that what I thought was beautiful as a child was totally available for me to emulate. Madeline Kahn, Carol Burnett, Amy Irving was a huge one. Lena Horne on Sesame Street, Crystal Gayle, Bette Midler. There were so many—not in the MTV style of what they wanted women to be like. That created contortion in me for a while. You are not required to bare your teeth at your own image.”
-Jenny Slate, episode 409 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Jenny Slate returns today for her fourth appearance on the program.
We discuss how this role in the new FX series Dying for Sex offered Slate ‘full wingspan’ as a performer (5:45), embodying best friend and caretaker of Molly, played by Michelle Williams (9:25), and what she extracted from herself to play a confrontational character (12:30). Then, Jenny describes her relationship to motherhood (17:30), a breaking point while making her 2019 film The Sunlit Night (22:32), and a timeless passage from her first story collection Little Weirds (28:56).
On the back-half, we unpack Jenny’s journey to healing from social media (33:11), a token of advice from her father, poet Ron Slate (41:48), and to continue our tradition—Slate’s personal and creative aspirations for the years to come (43:51). To close, a reading from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (51:57).
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at mail@talkeasypod.com.
Show-notes:
- Watch Jenny in the new FX series Dying for Sex.
- Read her books Lifeform and Little Weirds.
- Find our talks with Jenny from 2022, 2020, and 2017.
- See Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, The Sunlit Night, Landline, and Obvious Child.
- Learn more on her website.
- Follow Jenny on Instagram.
- For more talks, hear our episodes with Michelle Williams, Ke Huy Quan, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi. Reference photograph by Chloe Horseman.
Subscribe, rate, and review: Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Join Lemonada Premium to support the show and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.