Jenny Slate is a force to be reckoned with. With two new films, a new home and a new life chapter as a single woman, she is truly living in the eye of the hurricane. Never one to shy away from emotional honesty, Slate talked to New York Magazine about being newly single and what that means after years of being part of a duo, most recently a highly publicized relationship with Captain America (Chris Evans).
“The way I feel now is I’ve stepped out of the woods and I’m a forest animal and I’m standing on the lawn,” she told Jada Yuan in her New York Magazine profile. “And if anybody tried to approach me right now, they’re seeing a creature that’s just trying to figure out what the lawn is like. All I’m thinking about is the lawn. I’m not thinking about whether or not they are going to be a fun person to be on the lawn with, because I am just trying to be on the lawn.” She doesn’t characterize this fragile state as negative, instead stating that she likes this metaphorical lawn: it’s “filled with air, freedom, sunlight, and I’m alone.”
When Slate and Evans started dating, she and Dean Fleischer-Camp, her husband of three years, had only been recently separated. The divorce was finalized after she and Evans had ended their 10-month relationship. Slate told New York Magazine, “Even though we had an amicable divorce, I think that’s still something that you need to mourn. When you get separated from somebody that you actually care about, it is the destruction of a belief system. That is really, really sad.” In reflecting on this period, she said, “I just didn’t have the tools. And I didn’t think very hard about that, to be honest. I wanted to step into the light. Chris is a sunny, loving, really fun person, and I didn’t really understand why I should be prudent.”
That is just what she is doing now — allowing herself to mourn and rebuild in a space of her own. She is delighting in creating this (quite literal) space and picking out items that are just for her. “I’ve never lived on my own,” she explained, “because I really did go from one relationship to another my whole life.” She loves what her new décor represents, “that all [her] choices are for [her].”
While her focus is on her career and her new home, she says she is indeed “inclined toward partnership.” She describes herself as a mallard, “definitely looking for my other duck. But I’ve been in love in very strong ways enough times now that there are just some compromises maybe I won’t make.”
Images via BUST Aug/Sept 2015. Photographed by Emily Shur. Styled by Nikki Providence
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