How Jenny Slate was swaying between laughter and sorrow in dying for sex ''

This article contains spoilers for the “dying for sex” final of FX.

Jenny Slate did not quite understand how to react when people tell him that they found themselves sobbing at the end of “Die for sex», The new FX show that she plays alongside Michelle Williams.

It is an understandable reaction. Friday, the limited series, which began to broadcast on Hulu, follows Molly (Williams) as she turns her life upside down when she obtains a diagnosis of stadium cancer 4. Rather than staying in a wedding without sex with her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), Molly decides to dive into an exciting erotic trip, with the support of her best friend Nikki (Slate), who becomes her caregiver his life.

A mess of an actor who loves Molly, Nikki becomes the anchor of her best friend, the force of earth she needs while Molly explores her folds, desires and insatiable need to be sought and obeyed in bed. Their friendship and mutual care are at the center of “dying for sex”. This is why the creators Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, who adapted the series of the Wondery podcast From the same name, knew that it was a big order to find someone who not only should go out with Williams but should serve as the heart of the show.

“We needed someone who could be really funny and also break your heart and almost in a way at the same time,” said Meriwether.

But that was only part of the equation. “You must believe that Nikki is a person with whom you would like to die, it would be the most pleasant and most pleasant person to spend the rest of your time,” added Rosenstock.

The two said that it led to fairly strange casting conversations: “Would we like to die with that person?” They wondered. And with regard to the slate, the answer was simple: yes.

“I think she has portrayed all the caretaker's disorder in such a beautiful way,” said Rosenstock. And this required an agile comic artist who could just as easily highlight Nikki's anger against her boyfriend after having dumb her phone from the urgent messages of Molly that she can dazzle a molly in bed with Shakespearian soliloquies and a “wireless” spectacle in its own right.

Slate, whose recent work has included roles in “IT ends with us” and “the electrical state” as well as a first -rate video Special stand-up and a Essay book entitled “Lifeform”, spoke to the Times of his character, sailing in the tone changes of the series and what the Nikki bag represents.
This conversation has been modified for more clarity and length.

We have to talk about this “distraught” scene in the hospital where, to cheer up Molly, Nikki begins a performance clock. Not just “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, but a whole host of moments of this classic film Amy Heckerling 1995. Has it been written in the script or did you simply “distraught” in the back of your pocket?

I think many of us have “distraught” in our rear pocket. But it was written in the show, and I was delighted. Because I fully understand. I mean, I don't know a lot of millennials who do not know: “Oh, my God, I like Josh!” I knew a lot of these lines, but I had to memorize that of Amber. I knew there were a lot of people who would be upset if I disorder them.

Less with Shakespeare.

Oh yeah, it is very good. I mean, it's not Amy Heckerling, but he's very good!

The scene captures so much of what I found fascinating in the show, in particular the way it moves between humor and sadness. There are so many tears in laughter and so many laughs through tears. How did you come to navigate in this tonal change throughout?

For me, one of the characteristics of the signature of the show is that you do not make laugh without sadness. As Michelle says, Molly's cancer diagnosis acts as a portal so that she explores the truth of whom she is and how she has operated in the world via her erotic journey. It is this idea that you don't have to separate things. That you don't have to compartmentalize parts of yourself because they have turned you up. This show really tries to be as inclusive, emotionally speaking and experientially as possible. I think it allows really interesting performance, for unexpected moments in the story. But it also allows you to feel very close to history, because just like life itself, it will take place alone.

“For me, one of the characteristics of the signature of the show is that you do not make laugh without sorrow,” explains Jenny Slate.

(Justin Jun Lee / For Times)

As much as the show concerns the trip of Molly, it is also a story on careDon – on the perils and sorrows of this one but also the kind of joy that can come to want to take care of someone else, almost despite your own well–be. What did you learn about the care of care by playing Nikki?

One thing that I really liked in this character is that she considers care as something that is really outside of her own definition. Not that it defines itself as selfish. But she doesn't really turn to her to be the person in the room who will know how to make your taxes. She is simply not the person who is responsible for a kind of pen and paper. But the way she is deeply devoted and sure of her love allows her to participate in the performance of care as a process which is definitely serious, and she must learn to accelerate the pace on this subject. But the service provision is also – even if it has an end point because someone has a terminal diagnosis – an innovative process open. This is how I tackled it. As an actor, I will keep myself open. I will learn to innovate more I learn on Michelle as a interpreter and Molly as this character. And I worked with this opening. I allowed Nikki to stay in the moment. Nikki considers care as an investigation process where you have to give someone to grow. And so I gave myself room to grow up while I was playing.

I think you see it in an accessory. At the beginning, we see the Nikki bag as a chaos agent, then it is a kind of this bag of Mary Poppins, where everything Molly would need, she will have it.

Yeah. She does not find herself with it, like, a Clarce V. Nikki pocket is authorized to stay herself. The bag is always the bag. But the use is different. She does not have to become someone else to be the best person she can be for herself and for Molly. But it must treat – to use the metaphor of the bag – with what is internal, and to understand that for Molly, a lot of things she carries is simply not for the moment and must go there. And the same for Nikki. They have different tasks as people, in terms of growth. But in the end, Nikki's bag has everything for Molly, but Nikki's brain too. She knows exactly what type of vibrator Molly needs.

This is what makes these scenes where they cultivate heads – like the New Year's Eve, when Molly ignores all the plans of Nikki (and their fabulous prominent dresses) to connect with a random unknown – all the more difficult to look at.

I think it's a really important moment for Molly and Nikki, because even if they are really linked and that they are both engaged in what they do, they really need to live a differentiation to undergo success, whatever it means for both. One of the most beautiful things in this project is that there are so many inflection points. There are so many moments of change required, and specific and also quite surprising. This is not only a time when everything comes to the head, disintegrates and then reproduces. The characters are allowed to the privilege of a full stroll. And as Molly says it when she is about to die, “it's not that serious.”

“The characters have the privilege of a full stroll,” explains Jenny Slate. “And as Molly says when she is about to die,” It's not that serious. »»

And it comes from one of my favorite scenes in the last episode, it's when Amy (Paula Pell) explains death in the most thoughtful and most hysterical way. This line – “Your body knows how to die” – has unlocked for me something deep enough in the show and its history.

Because of Paula and his incredible performance, and the brilliant writing of Liz and Kim, it is as if we were very slowly turned towards this thing that we see in life and that we see in the films. It is that people die. But Paula explains it from the inside. I heard games by speaking to a caregiver in the hospice in my own life. But Paula's nurse, Amy, immediately made natural and also extraordinary dying. In the same way as having an orgasm is natural and also extraordinary. It is physical, natural but also intensely personal. And that the body knows what to do and must do it. As a person, I don't think much about dying. But I found myself, while listening to the monologue of Paula, feeling calm.

The Apoth is the perfect word to describe this scene, yes. Especially because it is at the end of the end not as depressing or dour but almost a little edifying, which is strange for a spectacle concerned with death and death. What should we withdraw from this last episode?

I think that for Nikki, in the last episode, in this last scene, you see that she has clearly been able to take a lot about what she learned about herself to be the caregiver of Molly, but also from her love with Molly, because she could love someone so much. She sees herself as someone with the capacity of immense love and connection. And she knows it's true. She has proof. She is proud of it. You see that she has used this knowledge in many healthy and positive ways. She goes ahead, there is wind in her sails. She is not in the stasis. She is not like a fossil because of Molly's death. There will be times when she will notice this kind of Twang of a cord because of the experiences that she will not be able to have with Molly. I like the show to be honest on this subject. It is not better at the end. She's just different, and it's okay.