Jenny Slate has refused to be pigeonholed in her comedy. Slate helped found an improv group, Fruit Paunch, while a student at Columbia University; after graduating in 2004, she and fellow group member Gabe Liedman formed the comedy duo Gabe & Jenny. In 2008 she began performing her one-woman show Jenny Slate: Dead Millionaire at New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. The following year she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live but created an unintended stir by swearing in her first appearance, and her contract was not renewed. In 2010 she co-created Marcel the Shell, a quirky series of stop-motion YouTube videos and children’s books, with Dean Fleischer-Camp, whom she married in 2012. She has had recurring roles on sitcoms like Parks and Recreation and Bob’s Burgers and co-starred in the first season of Married, but she is best known for starring in the controversial film Obvious Child, an unapologetic dark comedy about a woman who has an abortion, which earned her a Critic’s Choice Award. In 2019 she released Stage Fright, a stand-up comedy special on Netflix and published Little Weirds, discussing love, heartbreak, and living. From 2017 to 2019, Slate voiced the biracial Jewish-Black character Missy in Big Mouth, but she left after deciding that the role should be filled by a Black person. In 2021 she co-wrote the screenplay and story of the animated mockumentary film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a stand-alone prequel and sequel to the YouTube series, and voiced the main character, Marcel, earning her the 2023 Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Voice Acting in a Feature Production. In 2022 she appeared in the critically acclaimed film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.