Jenny Slate is a woman of many talents. She’s a best-selling author, an actress and a comedian. Slate also portrays a lot of cartoon animals — like Gidget, a Pomeranian in the animated movie, “The Secret Life of Pets”; an evil sheep in “Zootopia“; and “Snake,” a character in the TV series, “Animals.”
Slate’s latest book is a collection of essays called “Lifeform” inspired by her newest role as a mother. The great George Saunders has said, “This book is something new and wonderful.” And he’s absolutely tight.
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Slate has a beautiful writing style and she’s not afraid to share intimate and intriguing thoughts. When I first started reading “Lifeform,” I felt like I was reading her diary.
She joins WPR’s “BETA” to talk about the complicated beauty of motherhood and how she’s strengthened her connection to herself.
This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Doug Gordon: Jenny, you have said that “your own connection with yourself as a developing artist is that you just don’t feel yourself flailing anymore.” How so?
Jenny Slate: Well, I think for reasons that I’m still figuring out. I guess I really understand more and more about what I’d like to try to say and what style of work interests me. I think that’s the center, actually. I understand what interests me.
When you know that you just don’t want to waste time on things that are more based on desperation or hoping to be taken in rather than like, “Well, this is actually what I’m interested in, and I do hope to be taken in.”
I just feel like I understand the substance of what my ideal is as an artist, and that is being more revealed to me the more work I do. And so it allows for less literally flailing around.
DG: I was intrigued to learn that you began writing this book out of a fear of losing your old self. Can you elaborate on that?
JS: Sure. Sometimes I notice that when things have been really intense in my life that I actually don’t have very many specific memories. More of a memory of a feeling, and then maybe some key things. But the day-to-day isn’t there. And that’s more of like, man, I really just wish I sort of had that archive.
But then there’s a more threatening thing that I think I was experiencing, and I’m glad that I’ve come through and realized that the threat had no follow through.
When I became pregnant with my daughter, it was like night one of lockdown of the pandemic. I was in my late 30s at the time, and I myself don’t feel that people decrease in their worth the farther they live that into their lives.
I was very aware of the entertainment industry as a place where there is a lot of fear around aging no matter how you identify. It’s scary. I think for performers there’s a real sense of like being afraid that you’re going to be put out to pasture or something.
And now I think that’s so ridiculous that I was afraid of that heading towards 40, because at 42, it’s like I feel the best I’ve ever felt. And I don’t think I’m very much different from when I was 30, except I’m just like, not so foolish.
DG: That’s great that you’re feeling the best you’ve ever felt, The title “Lifeform” is a reference to your daughter, Ida Lupine Slate Shattuck. I believe she’s 3 years old now. Have you had a chance to read to Ida your children’s book “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” which you co-wrote with Dean Fleischer Camp?
JS: Yes, I have. She loves Marcel, and she loves when I do the voice for her. And generally, she’s a big lover of books, and she loves the library. She loves the Marcel books. Actually, I think she likes the second one more than the first.
Jacket © 2024 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
DG: I was delighted to learn that one of your best qualities is whimsy. I’m a big fan of whimsy myself, and I think the world needs a lot more of it. How do you define whimsy?
JS: In my book, I say that whimsy is not the same as kookiness. And it is the opposite of laziness. It’s not impulsivity or foolishness. I think whimsy is like enacting a playfulness, a belief in connections to things that I guess norms would say we can’t connect to.
Whimsy involves a major belief in the power of playful and creative acts, and that they’re kind of actually what’s holding up like the tent that is your life. Silly, silly things that are actually rather serious without being self-serious.
