The first episode of FX’s Dying for Sex, now streaming on Hulu, introduces Jenny Slate as Nikki—the funny, foulmouthed best friend of Michelle Williams’s Molly, who soon reveals that her breast cancer is terminal. “If you’re dying, why are you fucking weirdly vibing right now?” Nikki exclaims. Within minutes, she is loudly weeping and hurling expletives, then breaking into disbelieving laughter at Molly’s composure, hitting a note that’s both emotional and joyful—a tone Slate has perfected in projects such as Obvious Child, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Though Slate was drawn to these sorts of high-volume moments, she also appreciated how playing Nikki—who agrees to be Molly’s caretaker during her end-of-life sexual odyssey—gave her an opportunity to look inward. “The microphone makes me loud, but I’m not actually a loud person,” she tells Vanity Fair. “Occasionally, there’s the errant scream…but I am not really explosive at all. I really loved the idea of being able to scream on the street, not just from one’s diaphragm, but from the center of one’s breaking heart.”
stand-up specials and a pair of best-selling books, Slate was ready to funnel those feelings into a fictionalized character. Enter Dying for Sex—adapted by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether from a Wondery podcast about the real friendship between Molly Kochan and Nikki Boyer. Slate is already earning career-best reviews for her performance, with Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson calling her “a revelation” who emerges as “the true phenom of the series.”
Speaking in quiet tones so as not to disturb her four-year-old daughter Ida’s nap in the next room, Slate nimbly sidesteps talk of her last major movie’s protracted legal battles and delves deep into the meaningful work that followed. “This part came to me at just the right time. That said, I don’t have a scary feeling like it’s a fluke,” she says. “It helped open a door for me, and I do feel that there’s a lot on the other side. I don’t exactly know what it’ll all be.”
Vanity Fair: Nikki is introduced as a calamitous person, and many people consider you to be a very emotive actor who does voices and physical comedy. But for most of the series, Nikki has to keep her feelings close to the vest. What was that like to inhabit?
Jenny Slate: I love that question a lot, because it really gets to the heart of what I loved about the character. When you meet Nikki, she’s spraying her emotions out. And the more that she becomes a caregiver, it’s not that she becomes repressed; it’s that she experiences a deeper understanding and refinement of her own power. She understands where to spend her energy.
God, it felt so good to play someone who has a calm, clear awareness of what is in the depths. She can keep her strength in the deepest part of her, and keep her love and ability to be vulnerable in the most accessible parts. And none of that is a sign of diminishment. It’s a really, really beautiful way of Nikki finally being able to understand herself as an instrument of love and care.
By the end of the performance, I was asking to be as physically stripped down as possible. Can I take all my jewelry off? I don’t want to wear any makeup. Nikki in real life almost always has lipstick. And we kind of kept that, but she’s pared down, wearing the clothes that she probably would in a movement class.
So much of the series is built on your onscreen friendship with Michelle Williams. How did you forge that bond?
One of the reasons I was excited to do the chemistry read was because Michelle is excellent. And when someone is excellent, you have that opportunity to be your very best as well. I just let myself have my own desire about the moment: I really want to act with Michelle. I really think that I can. I’m not new to my profession. I am lucky that I’ve had the jobs that I’ve had, every single one, in order to understand myself as a performer. I just felt so eager. It felt like a real “put me in, coach” moment.
Did acting opposite Michelle feel like you imagined it would?
I had always been Michelle’s fan, but I’m not one to imagine myself with other actors before I’m on set with them. When I was a little kid, I used to do that, but it was honestly a lot of imagining what would I do if I could be with Gonzo from The Muppets. One thing that I was right about was that I imagined Michelle to be really well prepared and sensitive, but rather unselfconscious when we’re in the scene. This is someone who will be okay to take risks. I could trust, be playful, and be completely unguarded in terms of my own heart.
Was there something about where you’re at in life today that made you feel ready for this role?
I’m at a really special, unexpected moment where I’ve just become a bit more sturdy. Some of that is being humbled by becoming a parent, and I think that that has made me ready for richer roles. But if you had asked me at, I don’t know, 20, how I would feel if I’m finally doing the work that I’ve always wanted to do at 43, I’m not sure that that younger person, with her impatience and need to prove, would have understood that this is a good thing.
I’ve never felt more confident than I do now, which doesn’t mean I don’t experience doubt. I’ve always been someone that’s like, Why did I just say that thing? Wow. I could have taken a moment, but I didn’t, and I just said the thing. That’s always been a good thing for me in stand-up, then maybe a harder thing for me in personal relationships. My husband [writer-artist Ben Shattuck] always says that I just cannot not say the thing. I don’t ever want to go to bed in a disagreement, that kind of thing. But I do think a lot of it is not having any time to waste as a parent and as a person. I realize that this is my one chance. My hunger for acting has only grown stronger, but my self-reliance and feeling that I belong here, that I understand my own professional abilities, are really honed.
When you have a really meaty meal like this to sink your teeth into, does it satisfy your craving in a different way?
Everything feeds the appetite. And I also have different tastes. I have been a bit of a shape-shifter, although this job really helped me build what feels like a new type of confidence in myself, just because the material was so incredible and the actors were at the top of their game. I saw myself as part of that community in a really appropriate and well-earned way. I felt that I belonged there.
I can be shy. I’ve often felt like being a guest star, for example, on a show can really bring out my shyness, because it’s kind of like coming into school halfway through the year. And at this point in my life, I’m not having birthday parties anymore because I have a secret fear that everyone’s going to be bummed out that I made them come to the party. So it was important to realize that I belonged while also completely understanding why I am unique. In the future, whether I’m on set for a day or for many months, I just want to plug into that feeling.
How does it feel to go from being the creative force behind Marcel, your stand-up, and your books to being another piece of the puzzle again?
I like just being the actor, honestly. It’s always been my goal. I really never thought about being a stand-up comedian before I started doing it. Then I fell in love with it and was also intensively frightened by it at the same time. I love writing books. It’s a way for me to really understand my own perspective in my most sensitive and lyrical way. But it doesn’t come from a need to be the one in charge.
I don’t think I’m a very submissive person, but I’m also not an upstart. It’s a strange thing to say, but it makes me feel really safe to be directed. I am always interested in what I will do with specific instructions because there actually is a lot of room for interpretation. It feels a lot like when I was a kid and one of my sisters would be like, “Pretend we’re running away and we’re jumping onto a moving train.” And you would know what you’re supposed to do, but also know you’re playing and that you won’t get hurt, and you don’t really know exactly what train the other person is imagining, but you’re doing the thing together and it’s really fun.
The show speaks to a lot of themes that you’ve explored in your own work, like loss and sexuality. How did this project recalibrate any existing feelings you had on those topics?
What was really extraordinary to me was that while I felt such a deep connection to the material, it was being able to be in someone else’s psyche. Because I’m really not like Nikki or Molly very much at all. I haven’t had the same concerns. I’ve lost people to cancer, but it’s been my grandparents, and that’s really different than losing someone your own age who’s at the center of your life.
It did feel different than all of my other work, and that is what I’m looking for: How can I feel the most well suited for this role, but also be in a new space working with themes that I’m interested in? There’s never going to be a time when I’m not interested in heartbreak, in what intimacy looks like, in when someone realizes what their deepest, most truthful appetites are.
Your face is the final shot of the show: Nikki watching two older women who remind her of what she shared with Molly. How did you approach that moment?
I wanted to show that Nikki is able to thrive without Molly there, but there will never be a day that she doesn’t think about Molly. She will see little flickers of her relationship with Molly in other people’s relationships. That is absolutely spectacular and will also be a little pinprick on her heart for the rest of her life. Nikki can laugh, and oftentimes when she laughs at her most favorite, most extraordinary discoveries, it comes with a pang, because Molly is the only other person who ever got it in the way that Nikki got it. She’s with her and she’s without her. And it’s not a tragedy. It’s the condition that one is in when they have loved completely and don’t want to stop loving that person who has left them. It’s what it means to hold on but move on.
This is your first major role after It Ends With Us, which has been in the news for far longer than I assume you would’ve imagined. How does that impact how you approach acting in and promoting your next project?
For me and so many actors, you never know when your next job will be. Adrien Brody kind of just said this in his Oscar acceptance speech. [Dying for Sex] is the work that I was lucky enough to do. It’s my most recent, most exciting work. I want to spend every minute of my time talking about this, thinking about what I learned from it, and looking ahead. I think that is the healthy way to do it. Because once an acting job is over, it’s over. The only thing I can do is look forward. Otherwise, I think we’ll all kind of drive ourselves crazy.
You can decide to do that, but is it challenging when it can feel as if there’s a public mission to not get over your last movie?
Oh, my own mission is my own mission. My responsibility is me, and I find that to be a worthy charge.
We spoke a year ago for your last special, and you said: “If I’m going to be the best that I can be, it never involves throwing a tarp over the parts of me that are the more difficult aspects.” I imagine that was also helpful for giving such a vulnerable performance in Dying for Sex.
You know how they sometimes say that ghosts are around because they have unfinished business? I myself feel pretty ghostly if I don’t finish my emotional business, especially with my close, close loved ones. And if I’m saying that there’s a part of me that is not worthy of or too ugly to be a part of what I really want, then I need to change what I’m saying to myself, not what I want to be a part of. I don’t want to outrun parts of what make me me.
That type of brutal self-criticism is something that I’ve really worked to bow out of as I get older. I’ve spent a lot of time doing other people’s dirty work for me, criticizing myself in a way that isn’t even helpful. I need a lot of reminders not to start that time up again. It’s a practice, but I try to remember every day that I’m absolutely not required to be the person who injures herself.
That’s beautiful.
The one piece of advice that I would give to myself as a 20- or a 30-year-old, or to any person in their young adulthood, is that you’re not required to bare your teeth at your own image. It’s not what we need to be doing in order to be powerful and feel happy.
There is a moment in the show where Nikki has a stain on her shirt that appears to be Molly’s bodily fluids, and she says, “I’m going to be happy that the stain is there when she’s gone.” What is the indelible mark of this project for you?
The lasting thing for me is that we can tell ourselves it’s our fault when we experience limitation and discomfort—that it’s our fault if we’re not getting what we need, our fault if we’re not happy. Molly says that to herself. Nikki is told that by a lot of people. There are reasons for the things that can keep us in a state of limitation or disrepair where we’re not building back up again.
I don’t need to be afraid of being criticized by other people. And it’s not that I want to be criticized. I don’t. I am very sensitive. But I realized how much of my behavior has a little bit of a flinch of fear that someone’s going to look at me and say, “That’s not the way that’s supposed to be done. You don’t deserve to be here.” And I thought about how deeply that fear has affected me and about how actually inappropriate it is to be that afraid.
And I know this is long-winded and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but for me it does. Because Dying for Sex is about people learning to feel that they are deserving of joy and pleasure, and that joy and pleasure is really, really a distinct definition for each person. And I realized I could get a lot more joy out of my life if I wasn’t constantly experiencing a snag. I have become a happier person since doing this project. I’m already pretty stoked to be alive generally, but I leveled up in terms of being kind to myself. And I hope I keep doing that until I’m very, very old, and then drop dead.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
Why Wall Street Bent the Knee to Trump on Tariffs
-
Karen Read Returns to Trial: Here’s Everything You Need to Know
-
What the Loud Luxury of The White Lotus Says About Republican Style and the Fantasy of Wealth
-
Remembering Val Kilmer, a Magnetic and Mercurial Star
-
Gwyneth Paltrow on Fame, Raw Milk, and Why Sex Doesn’t Always Sell
-
How Snow White’s Failure Has Turned Rachel Zegler Into a Scapegoat—and an Icon
-
Carrie Coon on Her “Humiliating” White Lotus Hookup
-
Yale’s Fascism Expert Is Fleeing America
-
The Alexander Brothers Built an Empire. Their Accusers Say the Foundation Was Sexual Violence.
-
Meet Elon Musk’s 14 Children and Their Mothers (Whom We Know of)
-
From the Archive: Unearthing Conversations With John Lennon
The post Jenny Slate Bares All in Dying for Sex: “I’m Finally Doing the Work That I’ve Always Wanted” appeared first on Vanity Fair.
