The last time Jenny Slate was on a global stand-up stage, she publicly embraced singledom. Disinterested in the dating apps and keen to ascend to her role as “weird aunt,” it was a declaration that she says led her on a path of “sleeping with a lot of friends,” Slate reveals in her new special, Seasoned Professional, now streaming on Prime Video. “I really miss those friendships,” she says, “wish I hadn’t done that, oopsies, sorry.”
Netflix’s Stage Fright was Slate’s debut special, released in 2019 after both her divorce from her Marcel the Shell cocreator Dean Fleischer Camp and publicized split from a former costar. But that was then, this is now: Her latest hour of comedy, directed by Obvious Child filmmaker Gillian Robespierre and recorded at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, details the “love story in reverse” that transformed her life in only five years.
After the now 41-year-old performer married her husband, art curator–writer Ben Shattuck, and welcomed their daughter, Ida (all during the pandemic, no less), she found herself back onstage—and retracing her steps. “Why am I here?” she recalls asking herself, in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. “Well, I guess because I had a baby. I’m like, well, why did I have a baby? Well, I guess because I got pregnant. Why did I get pregnant? Well, it’s weird, but it happened after this odd road trip. Why did I take that road trip? It’s sort of like toddler thinking,” Slate continues. “My daughter asks so many whys. Like, ‘Why is it raining?’ And you’re like, ‘Eh. Well, condensation.’ They’re like, ‘Why?’ And you’re like, ‘Oh, shit.’ I get to ‘I don’t know’ pretty quickly in most of it. But this one I had the whole story.”
And Slate doesn’t shirk from the pricklier parts of said story—or the personal growth required to make it happen. “I just want to share as much as possible, like as much as you can share without going to jail, that’s my limit,” she says in the special. Slate makes good on that promise, taking detours from her daughter’s birth story to unearth everything from a traumatic middle school Lactaid incident to the audition that contributed to her parting ways with her Hollywood representation. Of that ordeal, she quips, “I would love for you all to be like, What a funny, fictional joke that she’s telling about a fucking fake thing that never happened to a nice person like she.”
On the eve of her second special, Slate spoke to VF about why she won’t be telling jokes about her daughter, her staunch refusal to be chill, and what it really means to be “brave for love.”
Vanity Fair: During Seasoned Professional, you reflect on the ending of your last special, Stage Fright, in which you swore off dating. Given that you’ve now made a special about falling in love again and becoming a mother—how do you reflect on the version of yourself from five years ago?
Jenny Slate: The version of myself five years ago that was expressed in that special is accurate, but kind of pumped up by using hyperbole or comedic lyricism. Comedic lyricism while also being totally explicit, I know. But I really identify with that person, the sensitivity of heart, the exhaustion at trying to find someone that might really understand you, and also combining that with getting older and really having a clearer view of your world, and that tinge of despair. You’re just trying to create some new, weird plans so that you don’t become dull and numb.
I just feel that I have new information now, and that comes in the form of understanding that happy, healthy stories can often include really unlikely components. It’s really allowed me generally to be a bit more open-minded and optimistic because now I really live inside of a certain proof, which is that you can have a beautiful life that consists of a lot of weird, silly, wonky pieces.
Jenny Slate and Ben Shattuck in 2023Cindy Ord/VF23/Getty Images
