Jenny Slate Feels Bad Every Time She Makes Fun of Her Parents

Books penned by stand-up comedians aren’t always a slam-dunk, as evidenced by the collective works of Tim Allen and Jay Leno’s nightmare fuel children’s story. Jenny Slate, on the other hand, earned kudos for her 2019 book Little Weirds, and is now back with another collection of essays: Lifeform.

Slate recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, and, in addition to discussing the book, she tackled the subject of stand-up comedy, specifically her philosophy when it comes to writing and performing material about real people in her life. “I don’t feel any interest in making anybody feel uncomfortable. I need to have creative output, and without it, I start to get super sad, but I would never place it above personal relationships,” Slate explained. “I place (relationships) above all else, and I have no inclination to be in combat at all.”

This sensitivity around not ruining relationships also extends to her parents. 

Obviously a lot of stand-up comics have poked fun at their parents on stage (it’s like 78 percent of Marc Maron’s act), and Slate is no exception. In her 2019 Netflix special, Stage Fright, she had a whole bit about her mother’s over-the-top reactions to being woken up in the middle of the night, complete with a description of how her mom sleeps like a vampire (and might “rip your dick off”) while her dad lies in bed “100 percent nude” in nothing but a sleep apnea machine. “They’re gonna sue me,” Slate joked.

The special was also, somewhat uncharacteristically, intercut with documentary footage of Slate interviewing her real-life family at her childhood home which, it turns out, was totally haunted.

In her most recent special, Seasoned Professional, Slate similarly discussed her relationship with her mom and dad, and felt kind of guilty afterwards. “I do feel bad every time I make fun of my parents,” Slate revealed. “I just have so much love and respect for them.”

“There was a joke in my special about me having to come to terms with the fact that my therapist isn’t my mom,” she continued, “and I had to call my mom and be like, this isn’t meant to imply that I wish Pamela was my mom and not you. It’s more that what I need from a therapist is to be her one and only.”

One can imagine that her mom could have potentially been upset, considering that the routine included the line “I see the center of my pain, and it’s that Pamela is not my mother.” But when Slate reached out to her real, non-therapist mother, it turned out that she wasn’t all that bothered. “My mom was like, ‘Oh, Jen, I don’t care.’”

Let this be a lesson to young comedians that working through deep-seeded parental issues on stage will all work out in the end.

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