Jenny Slate
Jenny Slate is an actor, born 1982.
Jenny Slate built her name in New York live comedy, the variety-show circuit rather than the club circuit, and in 2010 made Marcel the Shell with Shoes On with Dean Fleischer Camp: a homemade short built around a voice she had been doing to amuse friends. It went viral, became a series of children's books, and twelve years later became a feature film with a full awards campaign behind it. Almost nothing else in her career has been that straight a line.
Her Saturday Night Live tenure lasted a single season, in 2009, and the sitcom work that followed suited her far better. Mona-Lisa Saperstein in Parks and Recreation is a small, loud, perfect creation, and she has been a regular on Bob's Burgers for over a decade. The voice is the instrument, a high thin thing that cracks upward when she gets excited, and animation has kept her continuously employed: Zootopia, the Secret Life of Pets films, The Lorax, Despicable Me 3, The Lego Batman Movie.
Obvious Child in 2014 is where she got a lead and proved the range, a comedy about an abortion that is genuinely funny and never once glib, and it won her the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy. Since then she has alternated between voice work, indies like Landline and I Want You Back, and supporting parts in bigger films: Venom, Gifted, It Ends with Us, and a brief, extremely strange appearance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Movies (35)
- Zootopia 2 (2025)
- Zootopia (2016)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
- The Lorax (2012)
- The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
- Venom (2018)
- Gifted (2017)
- It Ends with Us (2024)
- The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
- Despicable Me 3 (2017)
- The Electric State (2025)
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)
- Forgotten Island (2026)
- Minions & More 2 (2022)
- The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
- This Means War (2012)
- Hotel Artemis (2018)
- Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)
- Brain on Fire (2017)
- On the Rocks (2020)
- The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022)
- I Want You Back (2022)
- Landline (2017)
- The Longest Week (2014)
- At the Sea (2026)
- Obvious Child (2014)
- Digging for Fire (2015)
- Joshy (2016)
- The Polka King (2017)
- The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience (2019)
TV (22)
- Late Night with Seth Meyers (2014)
- The Kelly Clarkson Show (2019)
- Bob's Burgers (2011)
- Parks and Recreation (2009)
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil (2015)
- Big Mouth (2017)
- The Great North (2021)
- Drunk History (2013)
- Off Camera with Sam Jones (2014)
- Muppet Babies (2018)
- Dying for Sex (2025)
- Ugly Americans (2010)
- Bored to Death (2009)
- Lady Dynamite (2016)
- The Whitest Kids U' Know (2007)
- Hello Ladies (2013)
- Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday (2008)
- The Great Debate (2009)
- Comrade Detective (2017)
- Married (2014)
- Brothers (2009)
- Kroll Show (2013)
Where to start with Jenny Slate
Nothing else she has made carries the weight of Obvious Child. It proved she could hold ninety minutes without turning the volume up, and it treats a subject American comedy usually flinches from with real honesty.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the other essential, and stranger than its premise suggests: a very small film about loneliness with a very silly voice at the front of it.
For television, Parks and Recreation contains her funniest sustained work in about eleven minutes of total screen time, and Bob's Burgers is where she has quietly logged the most hours.
The animated features are where most people have heard her without knowing it, Zootopia especially. Gifted is the argument that she should be given more straight dramatic work than she gets, and I Want You Back is the underrated romantic comedy.
Marcel and the personal work
Marcel the Shell began as a homemade short with a voice she does for her own amusement and became an Academy Award nominated feature. It is far sadder than a film about a talking shell should be.
The animation
A very large second career, mostly playing small anxious creatures. Bellwether in Zootopia and Gidget in The Secret Life of Pets are the two with the widest reach.
The television
Bob's Burgers and Big Mouth are the long-running voice roles, and Parks and Recreation gave her Mona-Lisa Saperstein, who is one of the most purely irritating characters ever written for comedy.
The film supporting parts
A steady run of studio and independent credits where she generally has three scenes and takes all of them. Everything Everywhere and Gifted are the two to seek out.