Jenny Slate Says Chris Pine Romance ‘Carousel’ Was ‘What I’ve Been Asking For’ as She Continues Dramatic Streak

Jenny Slate had told herself she wouldn’t work during the summer. Her family was moving to Brooklyn, her daughter was starting a new school in the fall. Then she read Rachel Lambert’s “Carousel,” and the script about two old flames reconnecting in Cleveland made her reconsider.

“The script was a surprising and new and unexpected version of what I feel like I’ve been asking for,” Slate told TheWrap reporter Casey Loving at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film is part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition. “I think it’s really important, at least for me, to have calm, honest conversations about what I actually like to do, and to take that seriously, because there are just so many times in my life when that question hasn’t seemed relevant to me.”

In “Carousel,” Slate stars opposite Chris Pine as Rebecca, an old high school girlfriend who reconnects with Noah (Pine), a divorced doctor. Rebecca makes decisions that bring her close to people and places she feels she doesn’t deserve.

“She’s kind of stuck, but sort of can’t help herself,” Slate said. “She’s not sure if she’ll ever get what she needs, and is afraid to receive it honestly. That whole thing felt so good to me. I felt that I understood it.”

In his review of the film, TheWrap’s Chase Hutchinson wrote: “What makes the film work so well is that its two leads give performances that are right up there with their very best work. In particular, Pine does his best acting since ‘Hell or High Water,’ capturing both the uncertainty of his lonely patriarch and the faux confidence that he uses to mask how he’s not sure what to do with his life. Equally as great is Slate, who gets the chance to show off her comedic and dramatic chops in a way we can only hope to see more of in the future.”

The role continues Slate’s recent dramatic turn in “Dying for Sex,” though for her it’s less about genre than shedding a narrative that hurt her.

“I realized that for a while I’d been saying to myself, you’re just not the one they’re going to think of. It’s not about whether or not you can do it,” Slate said. “That kind of actually is a lot of how Rebecca sees herself. For me, I realized that it just doesn’t matter what the genre is. There are just very few feelings that I’m afraid of inhabiting. There are very few feelings I feel disconnected from.”

Slate acknowledged there are still “character types” she knows aren’t for her, but the limitation isn’t about genre anymore. “This fits into the season of my body of work, which is like a season of both freshness and maturity and sunshine and shadow and wholeness,” she said. “It feels really good.”

Writer-director Lambert wrote “Carousel” at her parents’ home during COVID lockdowns. She previously directed “Sometimes I Think About Dying.” 

Pine got involved with the project after he spent a weekend reading through scripts when he received Lambert’s.

“It was so utterly clear what the winner was for me,” Pine said. What attracted him was “the clarity of Rachel’s acute observation of the smallest details of daily life. This is a film about the desperation that people have to connect and to love and to be intimate underneath this sort of very quotidian story about daily life.”

Catch up on all of our Sundance coverage here.

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