ROMPER: SAMANTHA PLEET; EARRINGS: DLC BROOKLYN; BRACELETS: SHASHI, DLC BROOKLYN
Death—where she got to smooch Jason Schwartzman as his love interest Stella—Slate says portraying women in an honest light remains very important to her. “No matter what the part is, I feel like I take special care to not do anything that’s gratuitous or that feeds into stereotypes about women,” she says. For example, when she was recently cast in the liveaction role of “a mysterious jungle woman” for the Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked movie (out in December), she was given a costume that she calls a “straight-up Survivor meets Temptation Island” getup. And she recalls thinking at first, “This is a weird sort of outfit for a kids’ movie, although if you watch Hannah Montana, they’re all wearing bikinis as pants—fine.” But Slate says she decided not to cave in to the sexy-island-lady cliché with her portrayal, despite what her costume implied. “Instead I thought, I’m just gonna play this however I imagine it, so when kids watch it, they’ll think, ‘What kind of lady is this? I’ve never seen a lady like this before,’” she says. “I feel that one of my responsibilities as an actress is basically to show that women can be many different things. There aren’t just four different types of women.” Frustrated with what she calls the “separate-but-equal thing” that goes on in the entertainment world, Slate also wishes that contemporary comedy wasn’t still so rigidly gendered. “Women are superstrong,” she explains. “When people were like, ‘Guys, go out and support Bridesmaids!’ I wanted to say, “They don’t need your support. Kristen Wiig is a genius. You need her support.’” Slate gets plenty of support herself from the enthusiastic crowd that gathers every week in the back of the Lovin’ Cup Cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to see her do comedy with her “platonic life partner,” Gabe Liedman, in a show they host called Big Terrific with fellow comedian Max Silvestri. The duo’s routine often features their “Bestie x Bestie” video series, and in a recent episode in which the pair asks each other, “What is wrong with your body?” Slate complains, “I suffer from gastro-storms, a lot of inner wind, and precipitation. Cloudy with a Chance of Huge Meatballs—rated R.” She delights in all things scatological, especially when she thinks these kinds of jokes are rubbing the male establishment the wrong way. “I think guys really need to get over their thing that women don’t poop,” she says. “Grow up. Everyone shits. Just close the book.” Aside from her Marcel projects, Slate will be popping up in pop culture a lot more over the next few months, with her role in Chip-Wrecked, a vocal performance in the animated Dr. Seuss film The Lorax, a role in a Reese Witherspoon movie called This Means War, and a part in the HBO series Girls, created by Lena Dunham—whom Slate calls “one of the most impressive people I have ever met in my life in every way”— all on the horizon. But during her precious downtime, Slate may be found watching The Golden Girls. “It’s one of the most progressive shows that has ever been on TV,” she says. “Can you imagine someone pitching that show now? ‘It’s about
“I feel that one of my responsibilities as an actress is to show that women can be many different things.
There aren’t just four different types of women.” post-menopausal old ladies who wear giant tents as clothes. They all lost their husbands and they live together, but they’re super–sexually active, and they talk about sex and they need sex. And one of them’s a slut and one of them’s an idiot, and they’re just hilarious. And they’re disgusting. And they’re all alone—there’s no men.’” Clearly, SNL was just one opportunity for Slate to share her talents with the world, not the beginning or the end of her career. Now on the verge of a whole new venture, recalling the day when she came home from lunch to find that Fleischer -Camp had assembled the pieces to make Marcel’s body still fills her with wonder. There the little shell with shoes on stood “all by himself on the kitchen table,” she says. “And that was the point where I thought, There’s just so much else.” "
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