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Jul 17, 2021 By Laura Studarus

Jenny Slate has a golden laugh. The actress giggles frequently as we hopscotch across topics, including life during lockdown, the entertainment industry, and food. But as she confirmed for herself during a recount bout of journaling, her trademark cackle comes from a place of real emotion.

“I’ve been looking back over the past couple of months, and one thing that I wrote is, ‘I’m uncomfortable a lot,’” she says. “It has nothing to do with whether or not I enjoy my life. It’s something I’ve gotten used to, and the process of understanding that discomfort belongs, and that there is a message in it, and that it does change.”

That tension, and comedic release of accepting that life is awkward, has informed much of Slate’s career. After a season on Saturday Night Live, her creative pursuits splintered in multiple directions. There was voice acting, including roles on Bob’s Burgers, Muppet Babies, and The Secret Life of Pets. Memorable television stints, such as the flamboyantly manipulative Mona-Lisa Saperstein on Parks and Recreation. Starring film roles in Obvious Child and Venom. A collection of essays called Little Weirds. And last year her standup special Stage Fright, which featured several scenes with her extended family, definitively proved that her brand of wired enthusiasm runs in the family. It’s almost impossible to believe that at seventeen, an acting teacher once saddled her with an age-inappropriate role, only to criticize her energy. (“I feel so defensive of my teenage self now when I think about it, and that an adult man put me in that position that makes me furious,” Slate recalls passionately.)

Her new film The Sunlit Night (available starting July 17 on VOD) once again delves into the uncomfortable sides of humanity. Slate places Frances, a young painter, who, faced with a career that’s not going as planned, a break up, and her parents’ looming divorce, decamps for an apprenticeship in Norwegian Lapland. While the tiny village is populated by a spate of quirky characters, including would-be Viking Zach Galifianakis, and a high-society Russian woman played by Gillian Anderson, the emotional heart of the film is Frances, learning how to sit with her emotions. As Slate explains it, art mirrored reality, and not just because like her character she was overwhelmed with the region’s surreal geography. Visiting the Arctic for the first time on a scouting trip with screenwriter Rebecca Dinerstein, and fresh off a breakup with actor Chris Evans, she recalls desperately needing time to think.

“It was like Valentine’s Day,” she says. “I wanted to be anywhere, but where I currently am, and I knew that going back to the United States, I would face the same things that I was facing, where am I going to live? Where should I put all my stuff? These logistical issues that also hurt the heart, and remind you that something fell apart. But when we went on that trip, I wasn’t trying to escape myself, I think I was actually trying to really focus on myself. And that’s different. Travel and movement can be used for many different things and I was trying to find myself again after feeling really really lost in something that did not suit my spirit. And so, I used that trip to reset. And sometimes if you can get far away from something that made you feel unsafe, you can see where your trauma lies.”

Slate says returning for filming with friends turned collaborators, was an act of joy. From the goats that aggressively took over her character’s trailer, to the log house turned Viking Museum, to the grocery store where Frances would shop for Norway’s iconic brown cheese, the elements of the film felt extremely real, because they were inhabiting the same space as locals with no Hollywood-created divide.

“Well, it’s so stupid to say, but everything was really special,” says Slate. “Everything was incredibly special because it was unlike any experience I knew I would ever have again. I like that we were clearly immersing ourselves in someone else’s very private culture, going to a place that’s like really set aside from the world and I loved how the people included us.”

Looking back on The Sunlit Night, filmed in the summer of 2018, Slate recognizes its themes might feel pleasantly straightforward. But like many, quarantine has forced her into another period of introspection. With her industry on hold, and “less threats from the outside world,” she’s been focusing on daily swims, and Buddhist texts, while refusing to get distracted by social media. And while the practice doesn’t come with passport stamps, the results are surprisingly similar.

It now seems like such a different world, and in a way, I’m really a different person,” she says. “I’ll always have my personality, but the way that I started learning and changing has really accelerated, and it’s different. But, I do think that what is interesting, and what can still translate even into a quarantine experience is that when you change your environment, there’s a chance for you to be in a place where you recognize nothing. And that can be really painful because you can be like, ‘oh, man I’m up in the Arctic and I’m still concerned with this petty bullshit.’ Or you can be like, ‘wow I’m up in the Arctic, and I don’t know anyone, and I realized I was smiling at people I love interacting with!’ This is a central quality that I see in myself, that I am like a creature who craves relating to other people, that I am like a creature of interactions and I’m gregarious. It’s not a reaction to how I think other people want to see me. This is naturally part of who I am and I think.”

It’s a statement, naturally, delivered with a laugh.