In Praise of Jenny Slate’s Range

It’s no secret that Jenny Slate is a funny lady; the 35-year-old actress has spent years making us laugh on Parks and Recreation, House of Lies, Kroll Show, and all-too-briefly, Saturday Night Live. In addition to her uproarious comedic stylings, her distinct voice has also lent itself to some of our favorite animated characters, including Marcell the Shell,  Harley Quinn in The Lego Batman Movie, Gidget in The Secret Life of Pets, Missy on Big Mouth, and more. It’s easy to hear Slate’s name and immediately think, “she’s so funny!”, but she is much, much more than that. In Landline, her new comedy now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, she demonstrates that she’s capable of capturing all the humor, emotion, and vulnerability that make up the human experience – but this isn’t the first time she’s done this. Slate has been showing off her range for years.

There are a lot of Slate’s performances to choose from when it comes to demonstrating just how talented she is, but her work in the past few years – Obvious Child, Parks and Rec, and Landline, in particular – has acted as a showcase for both her comedic sensibilities and dramatic competence. As Mona-Lisa Saperstein, the “twin sister from the same mister” of Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz), Slate is a riot. Parks and Recreation is full of lovable, hatable, ridiculous characters, but the Sapersteins’ absurdity trumps pretty much anything else we ever see. All dolled up in her most ostentatious getups, she fakes a pregnancy, threatens to light fires, and proclaims that she’s “done nothing wrong, ever, in her life“, all while being “the wooooorst” (but actually the best). Parks and Rec was never more fun than when it showed love to its most insane characters, and Slate brought something hilarious and special to the series. It also made her turn in Obvious Child even more of a pleasant surprise.

Gillian Robespierre‘s Obvious Child is a wonderful movie for many reasons, but much of its greatness is anchored in Slate’s flooring performance. As Donna, our recently-dumped, unemployed protagonist, Slate perfectly fuses levity and honesty, growing on you with every scene. Her performance never borders on feeling quirky or contrived; she’s a young woman navigating this shitty world just like the rest of us, and Slate is able to break your heart and put it back together over the course of the film’s brilliant hour and a half. If critics weren’t taking Slate seriously before, Obvious Child was proof that she could tackle just about anything – and since its release, she has. Flicks like Landline, My Blind Brother, and Gifted are just a small piece of the big picture that is her capacity for a wide array of roles. Who can make you laugh so hard you tear up and tear your heart out in equal measure?

Through comedies, dramas, and romances, both live-action and animated, Slate is consistently delivering extraordinary performances that set her apart from her peers. It’s not easy to be funny and it’s certainly no walk in the park to be moving, but the actress has shown us time and time again that she can turn it on and off at the drop of a hat. Range like Slate’s is hard to come by, and recognizing her on-screen savviness is long overdue.