Navigating Personal Growth and Public Life

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 her ‘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), her breaking point while making her 2019 film The Sunlit Night (22:32), and how some timeless words from her first story collection Little Weirds help make sense of this moment (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 formative passage from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (51:57).

Hear our previous talks with Jenny from 2022, 2020, and 2017.

Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at mail@talkeasypod.com.

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