Marcel The Shell With Shoes On co-creator and star Jenny Slate on creating a miniature moving microcosm: “You can get lost in it”

Jenny Slate is quite memorable as a legitimate dry cleaning customer who has a chihuahua around her head Everything, everywhere, all at once, but it’s her role as an animated seashell with a wonky eye that really turned heads this season. In Marcel wears the shell with shoesWe get a long version of the character that Slate created in 2010 with director Dean Fleischer Camp. She voices Marcel and uses her improv skills to launch the comic character’s quirky and poignant dialogue. Slate explains why she believes Neville’s miniature perspective inspired so much and why this show suits her so much better than SNL ever done

DEADLINE: You came up with Neville’s voice years ago when you and Dean and some friends were crushed in a hotel room at a wedding. What part of you then spoke through Marcel? Because sometimes it’s about expressing something you wouldn’t normally say.

JENNY SLATE: And sometimes it’s true. One of the reasons why I wasn’t cut out for a show SNL That’s because I’m really bad at doing impressions of famous people. I can do an impression similar in emotional expression to someone in my personal life, like my mom or my baby, but can I give you a really good Lady Gaga? No, I’m terrible at it and I don’t want to because I think there’s only one of them.

DEADLINE: You’re not going because you really don’t want to?

LEAD: Yes, I don’t really want it. And it’s the same with me, you can’t force me to do what I don’t want to do. And I’m really a person who strives to please, so this has always been a source of conflict for me. But Marcel’s voice is like someone painting an abstract painting to try to describe a set of feelings they have. It’s as close as I can describe. There are those moments in your daily life when you feel small and needed, when you need to be heard. You feel stubborn, but also comfortable and personable and ready to party. You put it all together and it comes out in this weird tight stream. And this is that voice. For me, I would be Marcel’s character if I could be genuinely considerate and connected to other people, but just a little less afraid of what they think of me. And Marcel is quite relaxed in his own condition.

FRIST: I think that’s part of his broad appeal, the simple purity of confidence in Marcel.

LEAD: Thinking about the film, I find it a relief that Marcel is the most stunned, hurt and tormented, and also gives him the freedom to take his greatest risks and feel his greatest power, which is that the world is infinite . It’s big. Of course you can get lost in it. It’s actually quite scary when you have a specific goal to commit to and then realize how much can get in the way. How much distance can there be – distances that you cannot even measure – and how much you are not alone in your house, in your city, in your country, on your continent or on earth. You are in the universe and it can be very painful to know it. But your smallness is part of it. And it’s no small thing, it’s just existence and presence… I just love it. I feel so good.

DEADLINE: In 2010 it was a bit short. You didn’t expect anyone to see it, and then suddenly millions were watching on YouTube. It took seven years to complete the film, but how did the film come about?

LEAD: I don’t think it should last seven years. And we also had a closure due to Covid. But at first it was me and Dean, and we wrote these long papers that turned into treatments, and we said, ‘There’s a movie.’ Then we brought in Elisabeth Holm, our amazing producer, and she also helped us develop the story. And then Nick Paley, who eventually became our co-writer and is responsible for many of the big moments in the film. He’s just a great writer, and his writing and attitude reminds me of how the Shakers made their furniture. It is so functional and aesthetically pleasing that it just fits perfectly in the zone. It’s not too little, it’s not too much. It’s just what you need for the appetite you have.

Liz introduced us to the guys at Cinereach and they were our obvious partners because they were really good at creative notes. They were really involved in the making of the film, but they also really gave us the final say. And when we came to them and said look, we need a little bit more of everything, they really thought about it and came back and gave us what we needed to make the movie that we wanted to make. . And this is Philipp Engelhorn, who founded Cinereach. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who really knows how to support artists like Phil. And the film would not have existed without him. It’s really Phil and the people who work with him, Caroline Kaplan and Andrew Goldman and Paul Mezey. You are amazing.

DEADLINE: Isabella Rossellini plays Nana Connie. Did she immediately understand what you were up to? Is that why she wanted to do it?

LEAD: When she got to the house where we were recording, Isabella said she didn’t know what Marcel was and her kids told her. She is really adventurous. She just seems to be someone who wants work that touches her senses. She had many questions. And the interesting thing is that sometimes it can be scary for them if an actor appears on the set and suddenly has a lot of questions. Many people want to know where they stand. But for Isabella, the questions were simply exciting. She trusted that we had the answer. I don’t think she had improvised much before and she was very keen to get involved. There was no hesitation. There was no “I feel crazy.” There was no question, “Why did I stick a microphone on my forehead?” Instead, she just jumped in and I felt like even though we had been working on the project for a while, her confident and collected demeanor set the tone for me that I needed to be right there too. and fully inhabited.

DEADLINE: So it’s basically improvisation that you work over and over and then take out the gems?

LEAD: Well, it’s layered and I think we try to talk about it very carefully because Dean and Nick have done so much work on the actual script that exists. But apart from that I also improvised a lot… It will be like we go to the bathroom now and Neville tells Dean how he makes the rope out of pubic hair. But from there you get the improvisation of, they’re called “hard hair” and you can hear Dean laughing.

DEADLINE: Sometimes, from the way you hear him laugh in the film, you know it’s the first time he’s heard something.

LEAD: Yes, it’s really beautiful. And then there are other moments that are fully scripted. Marcel climbs up the wall with the honey and stuff. So we recorded, then Dean and Nick went through the audio and made it a more understandable story because we had so much improvisation and so much sound. And from that point on, they were like, ‘Okay, we thought this moment was going to really land, but it turns out not much. What scene should take its place? Should the story take a different turn here?” And then they would write on it. And then we would go back and re-record within that script and improvise again and find more space. And then they came back and wrote more and explained what was said. And then we would record again.

DEADLINE: Is there a favorite line from Marcel that still resonates with you?

LEAD: I really like the last part in the laundry room. It calms me down and reminds me how I’m supposed to feel. Oh man I don’t know. i love it so much I’m not sure if I have a favorite line today, but I really like it when Neville says he’s pissed he couldn’t get a better goodbye.