How Jenny Slate overcomes ‘stage fright’ with optimism in ‘Seasoned Professional’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

“My central challenge is often my stage fright,” admits comedian and actress Jenny Slate. For our recent webchat, she continues, “I take a lot of risks. I speak freely and about things that are personal. That feels like there is a sense of rightness that comes with that. But stage fright, much like a panic attack, makes you feel like something is essentially wrong.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

In Slate’s latest comedy special, “Seasoned Professional,” she describes herself as a “relentless optimist.” She reveals, “If I were a pessimist, I would not be doing comedy at all. Optimism informs the content because most of the stuff I’m talking about are the things I feel are my biggest successes. My biggest success has always been tied to my greatest fears, misunderstandings or failures. Isn’t it strange that this small moment of riding a bike in Amsterdam is so incredibly important to me? It’s an example of participating in extreme bravery within a task that most people think is normal, but I thought was terrifying.”

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Slate also speaks about giving birth in the Amazon Prime special. She explains, “A risk I took was that I told my birth story the way that I think about it, filled with all these weird mental tangents and memories. You wouldn’t think a memory of getting an audition or a memory of having diarrhea on a seventh grade orchestra trip would have anything to do with a birth story. But when you think about the way we are as people, although we are in the present, our memories make a lot of things simultaneous. You really get to know the real person if you allow for the most random s*** to be in there. But it can also be scary to do that because you risk being misunderstood or rejected and perceived as someone who is sloppy.”

On her process Slate says, “generally I don’t like to overwork anything. I don’t tend to say the same things the same way. There are a couple of moments in the special where I said something in a cadence I had said in in before for connector moments. But when I watch it, I think those are the least alive moments.”

In the special, Slate also recounts how she ever so casually stalked her therapist. The comedian can report that her therapist “liked it [the special]. At least that’s what she said. She told me she liked it.”

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