Comedian, actress and Milton, Massachusetts, native Jenny Slate released an Amazon Prime Video stand-up special Friday called "Seasoned Professional."
Jokes range from riding bikes abroad to a middle-school diarrhea incident to love for her therapist. She also highlights the love she has for her writer and painter husband, Ben Shattuck.
"I like to think of it as kind of a love story in reverse, meaning it doesn't start with when I met my husband," she said in an interview with Boston Public Radio. "It actually sort of starts with us going to the hospital for me to give birth, and then reverses all the way back to not just the start of our relationship, but also to how I needed to grow as a person in order to have the life that I want to have."
Over the years, she's racked up an esteemed career, including a recurring role in "Parks and Recreation." She was a co-writer and star of the Oscar-nominated 2021 feature film "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On," and acted in "Everything Everywhere All At Once."
"I actually am the girl from Canton Ave., and now I'm here at the Oscars," she recalled of the night "Marcel the Shell" lost to "Pinocchio," adding that she was not unhappy for Guillermo del Toro. "If anything I want him to put me in one of his movies, so it's kind of a long game there."
Making an hourlong special isn't easy, but Slate said that one of the most difficult obstacles that every comic must overcome, which she feels was achieved in her newest special, is just being themselves.
"So, one thing I love about this special is, when I watch it, I — for kind of one of the first times in my career — feel that I'm like, 'There I am,'" she said.
Slate emphasizes: Comedy has been a male-dominated field, but female comedians have always been here.
"I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Rosalind Russell and Lucy [Ball] and Gilda Radner and Madeline Kahn and Carol Burnett — there's so many," she said.
Slate has so much material that some of it will appear in her essay collection, "Lifeform," set for an Oct. 22 release.
