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Episode: Jenny Slate Finds Strength In Sensitivity

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:46:24

Episode Shownotes

Comic Jenny Slate spoke with Terry Gross earlier this year about finding comedy in her feelings, motherhood, and growing up in a haunted house. Her latest stand-up special on Amazon Prime Video is Seasoned Professional and she has a new book of essays out now called Lifeform. Justin Chang reviews

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Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
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00:00:13 Speaker_03
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00:00:18 Speaker_06
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Comic and actor Jenny Slate's recent comedy special, Seasoned Professional, centers on her experiences of getting married, pregnant, and the pain and joys of giving birth.

00:00:31 Speaker_06
Her new book of essays, Life Form, covers some of the same ground. But critic Thomas Floyd of The Washington Post writes of the book that Slate wields dream logic and other devices to unpack the same experience in surrealist fashion.

00:00:46 Speaker_06
In her earlier Netflix comedy special Stage Fright, Slate describes growing up in a house her family believed was haunted. Jenny Slate is also a prolific voice actor.

00:00:57 Speaker_06
She co-wrote and starred in the Oscar-nominated animated film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, adapted from the web series that she co-created.

00:01:05 Speaker_06
She's also done voice work for animated movies and TV shows like Bob's Burgers, Big Mouth, The Lego Batman Movie, The Secret Life of Pets, and Zootopia. She played a laundromat customer in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

00:01:20 Speaker_06
And even though she was on just a few episodes of Parks and Recreation, many people know her for her role as Mona Lisa Saperstein. Terry Gross spoke with Jenny Slate back in March.

00:01:31 Speaker_06
Let's start with a clip of her recent comedy special Season Professional. Here, she's talking about giving birth to her daughter.

00:01:39 Speaker_02
I had a baby. I'm not trying to skirt the issue or like deny it. Like I did it. I did it. She's there, but it does still feel like, I'm like, it wasn't me. I did it. It's hard to wrap my mind around it.

00:01:56 Speaker_02
And I was pregnant for a long time and I understood that I was, but even on the way to the hospital, when my body was really hurting and stuff was starting to leak out, I was just like, kind of feels like someone's gonna sub in here though.

00:02:19 Speaker_02
Like, it's just such an extreme experience that I just was like, I don't know. It just doesn't feel like something I would do, you know? Like, would I knock on someone's door after four dates at 2 a.m.

00:02:33 Speaker_02
and be like, I just need to tell you I'm in love with you. Like, yeah. Extreme stuff.

00:02:38 Speaker_02
I've done it but like this I was like, I don't know it just doesn't seem like what she would do and like Anytime something's been hard or I haven't one do it like I've always just been able to quit or be fired. I

00:02:55 Speaker_02
It just felt like, I just don't feel like this was meant to be sent. Like I wanted to have the baby, but I was like, did you mean for me to do this though?

00:03:05 Speaker_04
Jenny Slate, welcome back to Fresh Air. That clip is so funny.

00:03:08 Speaker_02
Thank you.

00:03:10 Speaker_04
So I'm wondering, you know, I said that in your 20s you felt like an imposter adult. Now that you're a mother, do you feel like a genuine, actual, real adult?

00:03:19 Speaker_02
Well, I guess so, but I think I've also started to understand that that definition is like really rather subjective or it doesn't mean one thing. But, you know, do I feel capable? Do I feel like I'm supposed to be here doing what I'm doing? Yeah, I do.

00:03:39 Speaker_02
But I still have the same personality that I've always had. And that's rather, that's kind of a stunner, I guess.

00:03:47 Speaker_04
Who did you expect to be after you became a mother?

00:03:50 Speaker_02
It's so strange, but it's like, I do say to my husband sometimes, like, when is Ida, our daughter, is she going to have a moment where she's like, oh, it's, I'm calling her mom, but like, this is Jenny. You know, it's just Jenny.

00:04:02 Speaker_02
It's like, I think I thought maybe some, I mean, I think the good thing is that my cheaper vanities have kind of fried off in the exhaustion and also the thing like seeing, you know, connecting with things that are really, really meaningful.

00:04:20 Speaker_02
in parenting. But I think I just thought maybe I would be calmer or be given info that I definitely have not been given. I have to keep finding it.

00:04:34 Speaker_04
You say in your special that, you know, people think my feelings are too much and no one wants to deal with them. What kind of feelings do you think are perceived as too much?

00:04:47 Speaker_02
Being very sensitive. Let's see. Yeah, it's hard to think about it now but I think because when I say it out loud there's a part of me that's like, no, you're good. But the fact is that it's, yeah, sensitivity.

00:05:07 Speaker_02
insecurity, but I think the main one is maybe not a feeling but a behavior. And it's the like constantly checking to see if the other person, how they're perceiving a situation or like what does your face mean? Why are you making that face?

00:05:23 Speaker_02
It seems today that you have like a micro, a tiny micro bad mood. What's it about? What's going to happen? Why is it there? Is it going to lead to something worse? Is there something you're not sharing? Why aren't you sharing it?

00:05:34 Speaker_02
Is it because you're afraid that I can't take it? Is it because you think I'm not a strong person? Do you secretly not like being around me? Am I stressful?" You know, and then that's very stressful.

00:05:42 Speaker_04
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Is that just all happening in your head or you're actually asking these questions to the other person?

00:05:49 Speaker_02
There's very little that happens in my head that's not going directly into my husband's face. But I also think that I've learned to be respectful about that. And, you know, there are some things that are harder for me to tolerate.

00:06:08 Speaker_02
Like I see one flash of a thing and I'm like, what is that? You need to talk about it with me right now. But I will also say that I think that that's one of the things that my husband likes the best about me because I really, I deeply respect him.

00:06:25 Speaker_02
But I also want to know him. And sometimes I don't feel that It benefits our relationship to let something pass for a certain amount of time without discussing it.

00:06:43 Speaker_02
But, you know, I bet sometimes he wishes that I could be a little more quote-unquote chill.

00:06:51 Speaker_04
Do we have to talk about it now?

00:06:54 Speaker_02
Like right when he's falling asleep, you know, does he need that? I actually know that that's like kind of a no, a don't do it zone, you know?

00:07:04 Speaker_04
Yeah. So obviously there's a very kind of sensitive, reflective part of you. But when you're on stage, you turn that into a very, um, almost loud kind of comedy. You know, you're, you're laughing or sometimes screaming. Yeah.

00:07:21 Speaker_04
So how do you turn these kind of vulnerable, sensitive things into the kind of comedy you do on stage?

00:07:29 Speaker_02
I think they're already that. The way that I would relay this experience, like if you asked me to tell you what it is right now, it would look the way it looks when I'm doing stand-up. There would be screaming.

00:07:41 Speaker_02
There would be a doorway into my imagination where I'm like imagining what would have even had to happen in the other person's head in order for them to interact with me in this way. And that is my experience.

00:07:53 Speaker_02
It is like kind of a... I feel like I'm having sort of like an emotional multimedia experience all the time. I'm not one of these people that's like going through her life and being like, oh, that's material.

00:08:05 Speaker_02
Oh, you know, like I'm going to do something interesting. So maybe it will be material. I'm just I'm just going through and and living my normal life. But I don't feel that I have to do anything to turn it into comedy.

00:08:21 Speaker_02
For example, the first clip that you played about, you know, whether or not I've done extreme things, it's like usually it's, you know, behavioral, relational stuff that I've done.

00:08:30 Speaker_04
So it's knocking on someone's door at four in the morning to say, after four dates, to say, I love you. That was the extreme thing that you improvised?

00:08:38 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:40 Speaker_04
So when you first realized that you were sensitive and also sensitive in the kind of way where you're always like reading somebody else and trying to adjust for that, did you see that kind of sensitivity as a strength or a vulnerability, something you wanted to change?

00:08:57 Speaker_02
I think it was unconscious at first. It was just like something that I was doing and I didn't notice it. And that's really hard because there were returns on my perceptions and you know it was like they were never flattering just like as a kid.

00:09:13 Speaker_02
It was like you're doing something wrong. They don't like it. You know it was just like a lot of criticism that I didn't understand was was like starting from within in a way that I was approaching general relational dynamics.

00:09:26 Speaker_02
Like a lot of people don't do that. And I probably could have had a different experience. But then I think that when I started doing stand-up and realized and that was like I started doing stand-up in my early, mid-20s, maybe 23, 24.

00:09:44 Speaker_02
And I realized, like, oh, a lot of what I want to talk about is how I feel. And I started to be more aware of it. And I also started going to therapy. And I think I felt ashamed of how much it was so self-focused.

00:10:00 Speaker_02
Like, you know, what does this person think about me? I just felt like, why am I like this? Like, this is such a gross way to be.

00:10:08 Speaker_04
You know, I can see how that kind of constantly reading another person's expressions or reading between the lines of what they're saying could be a real asset as a comic, because as a comic, or at least the kind of comic you are, you're reflecting out loud about your inner life.

00:10:25 Speaker_04
So what can be complicated in the moment can really pay off, I think, as a comic.

00:10:33 Speaker_02
Oh, I think so, too. I also think that, like, It helps me to separate my real self from what I'm seeing in someone else and then internalizing.

00:10:49 Speaker_02
One thing I've noticed about myself is that when I am upset with something that someone else is doing, I have often, until very recently, tried to look inside of myself to figure out where the source of their

00:11:08 Speaker_02
their bad behavior comes from in me, like what did I do to make this person on the date or boss that I have, what did I do to make them be like this?

00:11:20 Speaker_02
And then in getting on stage and telling the story and needing it to be dynamic and that other characters have to exist besides you, it allows you to be like, oh, I actually didn't do that, the other person,

00:11:37 Speaker_02
They're weird, and they're weird, they did this weird thing, but then I'm also weird because my response was absolutely bizarre. And then you have like comedy. Look at these weirdos doing weird things.

00:11:47 Speaker_02
And with other people now, it's become more of like, how do I turn this into empathy? If I am interested in this person, if I see myself starting to focus on them, make it about them.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
Ask questions, don't make weird assumptions and stow them inside of myself and suffer by that.

00:12:05 Speaker_04
That's a really interesting point to make it more about them. Like, are you okay? How are you feeling? As opposed to, what's wrong with me? When you got into comedy, how old were you and what was your very early material like?

00:12:22 Speaker_02
I was in the improv group at Columbia and that to me actually feels like the start of it even though it was like a school activity. But that is really when I started to form as a comedian.

00:12:35 Speaker_02
Then I think when I was 23 was the first time that I started doing stand-up. And I believe the very first show that I did was about, like I was talking about working in retail and how much I disliked it. But I can't really remember what it was.

00:12:58 Speaker_02
But I do remember getting off stage and being like, but that was a weird fit. Like, why is it funny when I say things at dinner parties, but I'm not talking about that on stage? And very quickly I was like, oh, That's what I'm supposed to do.

00:13:16 Speaker_02
I'm just supposed to do what I would do on a date or hanging out with a fun friend, a new friend, and I want them to know what my life has been. I already do this. I already try to make people laugh. in order to engender a bond or a fondness.

00:13:36 Speaker_02
And so I just started going on stage and talking about my parents and my childhood. I think one of the main stories that I told over and over again, because I am fascinated by it, was how they

00:13:50 Speaker_02
How they like got in a fight with a contractor who was working on our house and there was like a hole in our roof because he was like, forget it, and he left.

00:13:59 Speaker_02
And how the bats, like we had just so many bats in our house because we had like an open roof for a while. And like it really, it still makes me laugh. I won't talk about anything on stage if it's like a dead subject for me.

00:14:11 Speaker_02
Like I think of stand-up as, at least for me, you know, everybody does it differently. But it's like, It's like a nugget of a story that I have. And the more I tell it, it starts to like get brighter and brighter.

00:14:26 Speaker_02
And then suddenly it reaches a peak and you can tell, you can feel the light like starting to go out. And sometimes something will, I'll be like, this is just a rock now. It's nothing. I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's not funny to me. I'm done.

00:14:42 Speaker_02
But then like 12 years will go by and suddenly I'll be like, Oh yeah, remember that story about that girl that spit on my face at synagogue at Yom Kippur and I couldn't yell at her because it was the Day of Atonement?

00:14:57 Speaker_02
I'm like, that's ready to come back right now for me. I mean, I'm like, that's next. Especially now that I have a daughter.

00:15:04 Speaker_04
I'm still thinking about all the bats and wondering, did you think a lot about like early vampire films? Because that's what I associate bats with, but also bats are famous for all the dung in bat caves.

00:15:17 Speaker_04
Did you end up with like dung on your bed or on the kitchen table?

00:15:22 Speaker_02
No, what happened was, so first of all, yes, vampires for sure. I was so afraid of vampires as a little girl and had a recurring dream that Dracula was trying to fool me into allowing him into my room so that he could kill me.

00:15:46 Speaker_02
And I had this recurring dream where I would I would see a frog at the end of the bed, and I'd be so pumped that there was a frog. This is my personality, but I was so excited about this big green frog. And I was just like, yes, this is so cool.

00:16:02 Speaker_02
I'm going to catch that frog. And then I would go towards it, and you'd be like, whoa, and it would be Dracula in a tuxedo. I'd be like, oh no, I'm dead. And then I'd wake up in a sweat.

00:16:16 Speaker_02
And so I got really, really frightened and I slept with my head under the covers, which became this huge thing for my parents that they were like, you're going to suffocate, you're going to suffocate. And I just didn't care.

00:16:27 Speaker_02
They told me, this is really unsafe, but And they had my grandfather, who was like, you know, the guy. Like, I would listen to anything he said. And he was like, you gotta suffocate. And I was like, yep, got it. But I still did it.

00:16:39 Speaker_02
And then my dad, he would like really come out in the middle of the night in his nighttime apparel, which at the time was a very, very long nightshirt.

00:16:54 Speaker_02
that he worked at the time at the computer company called Wang, which was like before IBM, like it was like one of the first computer companies. It was called Wang. And he had this like shirt that said Wang on it.

00:17:05 Speaker_02
And he would run down the hallway with an old tennis racket and swat the bats against the hallway. And we had like bat blood on our on our wallpaper. I remember just being like, he got one, you know, like, just like instead of a mosquito, it was a bat.

00:17:20 Speaker_02
Yeah just such a bummer like just such an intense way to live and be and I thought it was really funny.

00:17:28 Speaker_02
I talked about it on stage for so long because I was fascinated by it like wow I thought this was normal for so long that I didn't even think about it and now I realize that this was actually very specific.

00:17:41 Speaker_04
Now I'm thinking also about growing up in a house that your family, I mean, including your parents, especially your father, believed was haunted. Yeah. So tell us about that. You talk about that in your first comedy special.

00:17:55 Speaker_02
Yeah, I believe it was haunted too. Take it or leave it. Everyone has their own opinions about the spirit world and apparitions.

00:18:04 Speaker_02
But yeah, my dad had discovered a packet of love letters that were written to one of the previous owners of the house, but they weren't from her husband. They were from a some sort of a captain of a ship.

00:18:22 Speaker_02
And when my parents first moved in, my mom woke up smelling pipe smoke and my dad smoked a pipe at the time. She called out to him to come to bed and then rolled over and realized that he was asleep.

00:18:36 Speaker_02
And so she woke him up and she was like, you left your pipe burning, you're going to burn down the house.

00:18:39 Speaker_02
And so he went out into the hallway and saw on the stairs, says he sort of saw it, but didn't see it, but he saw it, but he didn't see it, a man in sort of like a heavy like Mariner's, like Seaman's jacket walking up the stairs.

00:18:57 Speaker_02
And there was a bunch of other stuff that happened. And I'm the only one that never saw anything, actually. Which in itself is scary to me because I feel like there's like a backlog. You know, it's all going to like come at once.

00:19:12 Speaker_04
So between the bats and your parents thinking you lived in a haunted house, that sounds like a horror film.

00:19:19 Speaker_02
Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Produced a comedian. Yeah, I was scared of our house growing up. Like I was sad, certainly sad when my parents moved out. It was a very beautiful house.

00:19:35 Speaker_04
A lot of parents would say, you know, it was just coincidence or dad just woke up and he was still like half dreaming. So don't worry because there's no such thing as a haunted house. But that's apparently not what your parents said.

00:19:48 Speaker_02
No. I know. They did not. I mean I think we were all a bit proud of it too. You know it's mystical and I think it was sort of a point of, it was kind of like a treasure but like a terrible one to have.

00:20:04 Speaker_02
And, you know, I don't remember ever thinking that my parents would lie to me, you know, like even if it might be frightening or hurtful. And I think they're very thoughtful people.

00:20:17 Speaker_02
But the other thing is, like, they might not have known how scared I was.

00:20:22 Speaker_06
Terry Gross speaking with Jenny Slate in March. The comic and actor has a new book of essays that cover the same ground as her comedy special season professional. The new book is titled Life Form. We'll hear more after a break.

00:20:35 Speaker_06
And Justin Chang reviews the new film Drurah No. 2, directed by Clint Eastwood. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

00:20:44 Speaker_03
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00:20:58 Speaker_03
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00:22:11 Speaker_06
This is Fresh Air. Let's return to Terry's interview with comic and actor Jenny Slate in March. Her comedy special Seasoned Professional and a book of essays is about getting pregnant, giving birth, and becoming a mother.

00:22:24 Speaker_06
Slate also co-created, co-wrote, and starred in the Oscar-nominated animated film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

00:22:32 Speaker_06
She's also done a lot of voice work for animated TV shows and movies, including Bob's Burgers, Big Mouth, and Batman the Lego Movie, as well as The Secret Life of Pets and Zootopia.

00:22:43 Speaker_04
I want to ask you about Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which started as an animated web series that you created with your then, were you still married when you created it? Or was he your boyfriend then? I'm trying to get the sequence right.

00:22:57 Speaker_02
Oh, yeah, we were just, yeah, we were boyfriend and girlfriend when we made the first Marcelle Lachelle short film.

00:23:03 Speaker_04
And remind me of his name. Dean Fleischer-Kamp. So you and Dean started the series as boyfriend and girlfriend, and then you were married, and then you divorced and continued the series together, which is another story.

00:23:15 Speaker_04
I should say that the film version, it started as a web series, and then the film adaptation, which you also did with Dean, was Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature.

00:23:26 Speaker_04
How did you come up with the idea of having a shell as the leading character in a story?

00:23:34 Speaker_02
Well, it started with me doing the voice. I was like just as a goof doing this voice. I was like doing a weird voice while we were... Can you do it for us?

00:23:45 Speaker_01
Yeah, I can do it right now. This is what it sounds like. Yeah.

00:23:52 Speaker_02
And I was doing it while we were at a wedding. And Dean had – he said he would make a video for a friend's comedy show but he hadn't done it. And he was like, can I interview that voice basically? Like we didn't have the character yet.

00:24:08 Speaker_02
And so we got him from the wedding. He interviewed me more. I said some more stuff. He had enough audio that it was like, oh, we're dealing with someone who's really small it seems.

00:24:21 Speaker_02
And then he went to the local arts like the craft store and the toy store in Brooklyn where we lived and he bought like a kind of like a knockoff of a Polly Pocket. It wasn't a Polly Pocket. It was sort of like a just a brand X one.

00:24:37 Speaker_02
And he did a bunch of different character designs and finally he took some like molding you know like what would you call it, like plasticine or like molding clay, and put it in the shell hole and stuck the eye in there and glued the shoes on.

00:24:53 Speaker_02
And I came back to our apartment and he was like, I think this is the guy. And I was like, oh yeah, that's the guy for sure. And so just kind of both of us feeling our way. But he is 100% responsible for the character design.

00:25:07 Speaker_02
And I just think it's so, I just think Marcel looks perfect. I think he's a perfect looking creature.

00:25:14 Speaker_04
When you were creating Marcelle's voice, I think you said it was a voice you'd used before?

00:25:20 Speaker_02
I think I had tried to use it one time when I was on SNL but I vocally could not figure out how to hold on to it and I had lost it. I couldn't find it. I couldn't do it literally. And it was like, great, like another failure here.

00:25:38 Speaker_02
And I mean, looking back on it, I'm really glad that I didn't spend that in that context just because it led to so much more creative control for me to do it just outside of that community.

00:25:50 Speaker_02
But I, yeah, I suddenly just came back and I held on and I was able to click into it. And the more I do it, the more I can find it right away.

00:25:59 Speaker_01
Can you do it a little bit more so we can hear it?

00:26:02 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean, you could probably just, like, I can do it, like, whenever I want to, but probably at the end of a day of, like, recording it, I get, like, a little, I get tired, like, my voice feels tired, but it doesn't, like, hurt to do it or anything, but even doing it, it's almost like if a person were to do, like, repeated movements with their body, they get into, like, a more, like, clarified mental state.

00:26:28 Speaker_01
That's, like, kind of how I feel about it as well.

00:26:31 Speaker_04
It's such an earnest voice. I've heard you say that you talk to your daughter, your three-year-old daughter, sometimes in Marcel's voice. How did you start doing that?

00:26:43 Speaker_02
I talk in Marcel's voice sometimes without realizing it. A lot of times there's a running commentary, especially if we're in traffic or we're in a line. It's really fun in a car with just my family to be like, this is taking forever.

00:26:59 Speaker_02
It's just how to get into it. And the first time she heard it, she was like, what is that? What is that? And she thinks he lives inside of me but that's not disturbing to her. She also knows what he looks like but she never asks to see him.

00:27:15 Speaker_02
She just wants to talk to him.

00:27:16 Speaker_04
AMT – What do you tell her in Marcel's voice that's different from what you tell her in your voice?

00:27:23 Speaker_02
Marcelle gets more info from her. So actually as Marcelle, I just ask her questions. You know, like, why didn't you like that sandwich? What was wrong with it? What happened at school today? She'll give Marcelle a bigger answer, which is really nice.

00:27:41 Speaker_02
And then she likes singing with Marcelle.

00:27:45 Speaker_04
You want to sing in Marcelle's voice and tell us how you do that?

00:27:47 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's like, okay, this is one of the songs that Ida and I sing together.

00:27:54 Speaker_01
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn is as high as an elephant's eye. And it looks like it's climbing straight up to the sky.

00:28:13 Speaker_04
A song from Oklahoma.

00:28:15 Speaker_02
I love that song. Oh, what a beautiful morning. It's the best.

00:28:20 Speaker_04
Yeah. Okay. That's great. Is it hard to maintain the voice while you're singing?

00:28:26 Speaker_02
I think it's easier to sing in Marcel's voice than it is to speak in Marcel's voice. Why is that? I'm not sure. I really actually don't know. I do a lot of voice work but I'm not in any way a trained performer.

00:28:41 Speaker_02
I've not been to like an acting conservatory or singing classes or you know nothing. So I'm just kind of... I'm just working with whatever I have.

00:28:54 Speaker_04
Now you do voices for other animated series. You've done voices for Bob's Burgers and Big Mouth, Zootopia, other animated films. So do you want to do the Bob's Burgers voice for us and tell us about creating it?

00:29:11 Speaker_02
Well, in Bob's Burgers, I kind of just talk like this. I play a character named Tammy. She's not nice. She's really selfish. She wants everyone to look at her right now. It's just kind of like me doing a mean, my version of a mean girl voice.

00:29:27 Speaker_02
And they wrote that character and then asked me to play it, which I love. And then I'm also on another show on Fox called The Great North, which is so funny. written and created by the Molyneux sisters who wrote on Bob's Burgers as well.

00:29:45 Speaker_02
And I play a teenager named Judy.

00:29:48 Speaker_02
And like it's always a version of my voice but with Judy it's like I just kind of like lighten it up a little bit and I just sort of like just like don't enunciate as much and like I'm just like kind of think about things and yeah like you know I just like kind of talk about this and it's sort of my voice but I just like just a little bit sort of more relaxed, pulled back.

00:30:09 Speaker_04
Well, we have to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actor Jenny Slate. Her new comedy special, Seasoned Professional, is streaming on Amazon. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.

00:30:23 Speaker_03
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00:31:26 Speaker_04
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with comic and actor Jenny Slate. Her new comedy special, Seasoned Professional, is about getting pregnant, giving birth, and becoming a mother, and it's about a lot of other subjects along the way.

00:31:40 Speaker_04
How did you know that you could do voices?

00:31:42 Speaker_02
Oh man, I mean forever it's been my delight to do voices and I've just always thought the voices are the funniest thing. Like as a kid I thought Robin Williams as the genie was just, it was like drugs for me. Like I just thought that's the best.

00:31:59 Speaker_02
I loved Saturday Night Live, I loved when people spoke in voices that weren't theirs. I just thought that that was one of the funniest, most startling, eye-catching things that a performer could do.

00:32:14 Speaker_02
And I've just always loved it and always tried to do as many voices as I can. But I'm really bad at accents from other countries. I can't do any real accents. I can't do any, I don't think, at all.

00:32:31 Speaker_04
Were there other animated characters whose voices you loved growing up?

00:32:35 Speaker_02
Oh yeah. I mean to the like you know the trickly just sickening like the trickly sweet voices of the chipmunks were you know I just like loved how that sounded and would like use the record player to speed things up so that I could hear that tone.

00:32:52 Speaker_02
But I guess my favorite voice actually on TV was Pee Wee.

00:33:01 Speaker_04
Oh Pee Wee was great. Yeah.

00:33:05 Speaker_02
He really screamed. He really yelled at people. I mean Pee Wee has some attitude as the character but I guess that got deep in me because I love to scream on stage.

00:33:20 Speaker_04
You do and I was going to bring that up. You have so many different screams and sometimes you'll do several different screams consecutively.

00:33:29 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:33:30 Speaker_04
So I'm going to ask you, if you don't mind, and if you don't think it'll blow out your voice, to back up from the mic and do some screams for us.

00:33:38 Speaker_04
How about before each scream, tell us what you're thinking of that this scream represents, like what context you'd use that scream in.

00:33:46 Speaker_02
Right. Okay. So I think like if I'm like so startled by something that I realize is happening and I can't stop it, the scream would kind of be like, like that, like you're going on like a big ride.

00:34:02 Speaker_02
But like, you know, for example, I think I just did this on Seth Meyers. And I don't think about it. I don't like preload my screams or even know that they're going to come. But I know when I'm performing, I'm allowed to do them.

00:34:14 Speaker_02
But like one time, like a fortune teller gave me like a really scary fortune. And that reaction that I had was, And you know, that's the truth. The screams are like the truth. They're like the level at which I'm feeling things.

00:34:32 Speaker_04
What did the fortune teller tell you?

00:34:34 Speaker_02
At the bachelorette party that preceded my first wedding, she told me that I hadn't met the right man, but that I would know it when I met him. Thanks for that. But she was right. Yeah, should have listened.

00:34:52 Speaker_04
Can you do one more?

00:34:53 Speaker_02
Um, sure. I wonder what, uh, yeah. And then like, okay, then there's one that's like kind of like a variation that happens when there's like, you're watching something and you don't know what's going on, which is like, oh, that's sort of more Tarzani.

00:35:11 Speaker_04
Do you ever hurt your voice when you scream? Do you know how to scream without shredding your voice?

00:35:16 Speaker_02
I do know how to scream without shredding my voice. So I do that like when I'm recording for the Great North.

00:35:22 Speaker_02
I feel like I scream a lot actually in the Great North just because like they live in Alaska and they're always like falling off a cliff or you know like they're like on a sled or something like that. But I do know how to do it. I will say on stage

00:35:35 Speaker_02
I'm looking for catharsis, and there are things that I don't have a plan, but somewhere deep inside knows that I want to do it, and I need to do it, and I will fully scream.

00:35:49 Speaker_02
And it does, I'll end up hoarse for sure after that, but there's a difference between pretending to run really fast and running really fast.

00:35:59 Speaker_04
One of the things you failed at was one of the most important turning points in your life, all your life you wanted to be on Saturday Night Live, and then you got the job and you accidentally turned Frick into the four letter expletive.

00:36:11 Speaker_04
You were supposed to use the euphemism, but the real word came out, so the Frick turned into the four letter expletive, and you were fired. I think that was the reason you were fired.

00:36:24 Speaker_02
No I don't think so actually. I think I generally just didn't fit in. Socially I felt like I fit in. I'm still friends with most of the people that I worked with but I did not click in as a person who could work there for whatever reason. Yeah.

00:36:46 Speaker_02
I mean I just was not a good fit. Yeah. I would imagine that that's why. Did they explain why? No. They didn't. And I actually found out that I was fired like on the Internet.

00:37:00 Speaker_02
So it just kind of was like... Was that through word of mouth that was on the Internet or a press release? Yeah, I think it was on Deadline Hollywood and somebody that I knew was like, oh no, I'm so sorry. I saw the article in the trades basically.

00:37:18 Speaker_02
And I was just like, what? I didn't see it. I hadn't seen it yet.

00:37:25 Speaker_04
Your first comedy special was called Stage Fright and you attribute your stage fright in part from getting fired at Saturday Night Live. What's the connection?

00:37:35 Speaker_02
I don't think it's like the firing. I think it was like also Twitter was like relatively new then. And I had like no understanding of myself as a public person. You know, I just thought of myself the way people used to think about themselves.

00:37:50 Speaker_02
It was like just in their life. And maybe if someone had a picture of you, it was like, you know, in an album. Like I just didn't understand that there would be an online forum commenting on me. And yeah, like, you know, I'm a normal person in my way.

00:38:04 Speaker_02
It hurt my feelings. And it made me anxious and less willing to show myself to people. But I also knew that that was not a good place to end. So I tried to work through it.

00:38:21 Speaker_04
When I interviewed in 2014, as our time was about to run out, we had been talking about stage fright and how you went to a hypnotist who you kind of attribute to helping you overcome the stage fright, and you think you were hypnotized.

00:38:36 Speaker_04
So you went back to the hypnotist to help you overcome your habit of sleep eating, and I had to cut off that part of the conversation because we had to end the interview, our time was running out.

00:38:47 Speaker_04
And so I'd like to pick up where we left off the last time. I'm not sure what sleep eating is.

00:38:52 Speaker_02
Well it used to be. And also like I used to also just like smoke a lot more weed. You know now I don't anymore. It's been maybe six years since like there has been any marijuana in my life. Like it makes me so paranoid. It's just, I'm never going back.

00:39:11 Speaker_02
But maybe it was a function of that, of just like being hungry from what they call the munchies. But for me what it was, was like I would be almost fully asleep and go into the kitchen and I would eat something and then usually not return it.

00:39:26 Speaker_02
So we would like wake up in the morning and go into the kitchen and there would be ice cream out, things like that, like things that had been ruined. I think it's a major sign of anxiety. It's not something that

00:39:39 Speaker_02
I don't sleep eat anymore but I can tell when I am fretting and worrying because I usually wake up around 3 in the morning and have to go and have like a little snack and then the second I have it my mind goes blank and I'm able to rest.

00:39:57 Speaker_02
But it only happens when I'm anxious.

00:40:00 Speaker_04
Do you think this hypnosis helped with that?

00:40:02 Speaker_02
I don't think so. I don't think so. And I also think that I really pushed mostly through whatever he did to me to get rid of the stage fright. It was better for a while and then it just came back so much around the time.

00:40:22 Speaker_02
I really want to do a live stage show, kind of like a one-woman show. And the thing holding me back is I am delighted when I think about the rehearsal process.

00:40:34 Speaker_02
I'm delighted when I think about things like set design, what the material is, and I am so terrified. thinking of grossed out, genuinely thinking of the time between a matinee and an evening performance.

00:40:48 Speaker_02
And the time when I play clubs, which is not that often, but I do like two shows a night. And after getting off stage after the first show, the feeling of like, yeah, I did it. And then the realization that I have to go again. It's like a Sisyphusian.

00:41:11 Speaker_02
It's just like, oh my god, I cannot believe that I have to do this again. It is.

00:41:15 Speaker_04
It's like tension release. Oops, tension.

00:41:17 Speaker_02
Totally. Yeah. It's not a comfortable feeling and it's not like the lady doth protest. Tell me I'm really good and I should be doing this. It's like I don't like it. It's not a good fit for me and I have to

00:41:29 Speaker_02
take whatever success I've earned to allow myself a schedule that is doable for me in a neurological way. It really, really messes with me, the stage fright.

00:41:43 Speaker_04
Jenny Slate, it's been great to talk with you again. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

00:41:47 Speaker_02
Thank you for having me back. It's really nice to, it's always nice to be invited in once, but I always say it's, it's the return, you know, that means that, that you're okay.

00:41:57 Speaker_04
You're more than okay. Thank you so much for having me.

00:42:00 Speaker_02
This is a real pleasure. Thank you.

00:42:03 Speaker_06
Ginny Slate talking with Terry Gross earlier this year. The comic and actor has a new book of essays titled Life Form. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new Clint Eastwood film, Juror No. 2. This is fresh air.

00:42:38 Speaker_07
Visit viore.com slash NPR to receive 20% off your first purchase and enjoy free shipping on any U.S. orders over $75. Discover the versatility of Viore clothing. This message comes from NPR sponsor ThinkFun.

00:42:53 Speaker_07
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00:43:24 Speaker_06
This is Fresh Air. In the courtroom drama, Juror No. 2, the latest movie directed by Clint Eastwood, Nicholas Holt plays a man called up for jury duty and is confronted with a moral crisis. The movie also features performances by Toni Collette and J.K.

00:43:41 Speaker_06
Simmons. Our film critic Justin Chang says, it's a thoughtful, complex story and one of Eastwood's better recent films, and recommends that you see it in theaters while you can.

00:43:52 Speaker_08
Last week, Warner Brothers opened Juror No. 2 in limited release... ...with minimal fanfare and no plans to report the film's domestic box office.

00:44:03 Speaker_08
It's not the typical treatment for a Clint Eastwood movie... ...especially one that some think might be the last Clint Eastwood movie. I hope they're wrong.

00:44:13 Speaker_08
Either way, the fact that Eastwood's longtime studio would bury his latest speaks to the various crises that have befallen the industry in general, and Warners in particular. At 94, Eastwood seems ever more like an anomaly in American filmmaking.

00:44:30 Speaker_08
A Hollywood legend with nothing left to prove, still cranking out his unfussy, mid-budget dramas for a grown-up audience that the major studios have all but abandoned.

00:44:42 Speaker_08
Juror number two is actually one of his better directed efforts of late... Certainly compared with recent disappointments like Cry Macho and The Mule.

00:44:52 Speaker_08
There's a little old-school John Grisham in this movie's legal thriller DNA... Even though it features an original screenplay by Jonathan Abrams.

00:45:02 Speaker_08
Nicholas Holt stars as Justin Kemp... A Georgia-based magazine writer who's expecting a baby with his wife, played by Zoe Deutsch. It's a high-risk pregnancy, and so the timing isn't ideal when Justin gets selected as a juror in a major murder trial.

00:45:20 Speaker_08
The defendant, James Scythe, stands accused of killing his girlfriend, Kendall Carter, after the two had a heated argument in a bar one night.

00:45:30 Speaker_08
As the facts of the case emerge, Justin, a recovering alcoholic, realizes that he was at that same bar on the very night in question.

00:45:40 Speaker_08
Suddenly alarmed that he could be more involved than he thought, he seeks advice from his AA sponsor, Larry, who also happens to be a lawyer, played by Kiefer Sutherland.

00:45:52 Speaker_00
So I went to clear my head and found myself at Rowdy's Hideaway. I ordered a drink and sat there for a while, then I got up and left. I went about a quarter of a mile and I hit something.

00:46:05 Speaker_00
I got out of the car and I looked around, I checked, I didn't see anything and I figured it was a deer that ran off and then I got back in the car and went home. Okay, what's the problem? I got called for jury duty, the Kendall Carter case.

00:46:22 Speaker_00
They found her body in a creek bed about a quarter mile from Rowdy's Highway last October.

00:46:38 Speaker_08
Larry advises Justin to keep quiet, lest he face serious prison time. But Justin, worried that his silence could send an innocent man to prison, tries to plead Seitz's case during deliberations, which quickly turn contentious.

00:46:53 Speaker_08
There's a creakiness to the writing here. The bickering sounds forced, and some of the jurors veer toward cultural stereotypes. But others are more sharply drawn. J.K. Simmons brings his hard-nosed intelligence to the role of one of Justin's few allies.

00:47:09 Speaker_08
While Cedric Yarbrough finds the simmering tension in every line as a juror convinced of the defendant's guilt.

00:47:17 Speaker_08
It all plays like a barbed riff on 12 Angry Men, where one man seeks to sway his fellow jurors, not to bring about justice so much as assuage his own conscience. But Justin isn't the only character held up for moral scrutiny.

00:47:32 Speaker_08
The courtroom's most compelling figure is the prosecutor, Faith, played with terrific nuance by Toni Collette. Faith does her job with skill, integrity, and a great deal of ambition.

00:47:45 Speaker_08
She's running for district attorney, and she knows that securing a conviction could help her chances. Colette and Holt played a mother and son in the 2002 comedy About a Boy. And while the actors don't share too much screen time in Juror No.

00:48:01 Speaker_08
2, beyond one doozy of a late scene, it's still a pleasure to see them reunited more than 20 years later. Holt is especially strong as a man wrestling quietly with past demons and present dilemmas, and whose response is to rationalize like crazy.

00:48:19 Speaker_08
After all, maybe Scythe, a man known for his rough past, really did kill his girlfriend. And even if he didn't, how can Justin turn himself in, just as he and his wife are about to start a family?

00:48:32 Speaker_08
Eastwood may take his characters to task, but he also sees the bigger picture.

00:48:38 Speaker_08
He's long had a skeptical view of institutions and their failings, whether it's a corrupt police force in Changeling, or the manipulations of the media in movies like Sully and Richard Jewell. In Juror No.

00:48:49 Speaker_08
2, he takes measured aim at the American justice system, from the dogged attorneys muddling their way through the evidence, to the exhausted jurors who just want to deliver a quick verdict, to the procedural fault lines and blind spots that can make the truth seem so elusive.

00:49:06 Speaker_08
It's a thorny, thoughtful film, and I wish its own studio had more confidence in it. If Eastwood does make another one, I wouldn't mind seeing him take on another broken American system, rife with cynicism, self-interest, and compromise.

00:49:22 Speaker_08
And that, of course, is Hollywood itself.

00:49:27 Speaker_06
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Juror No. 2, directed by Clint Eastwood.

00:49:35 Speaker_06
On Monday's show, Marine Corps veteran and essayist Phil Kley examines the moral complexities of war, examining what he calls the growing disconnect between American civilians and the military.

00:49:47 Speaker_06
I talk with Kley about his reflections on the role of the U.S. military in ongoing wars and the priorities of incoming President Donald Trump. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

00:50:00 Speaker_06
Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

00:50:17 Speaker_03
This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that.

00:50:27 Speaker_03
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00:50:40 Speaker_03
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