Jenny Slate tells Seth Meyers about not keeping it together when she met Alanis Morissette

Actress, stand-up, author, and new mom Jenny Slate made room in her busy schedule of falling asleep where she stands and jamming food into her mouth while taking phone calls to stop by (via Zoom) Thursday’s Late Night With Seth Meyers. Slate and Meyers, who shared a very brief overlap as Saturday Night Live cast members, managed to carve out a little time while Slate’s baby Ida was, presumably, exhausted from making her mom so exhausted, as Slate and Meyers commiserated about the sleep-stealing joys of new parenthood. (Actually, Meyers told a story about how his wife is so tired all the time, since men just don’t know.)

Regardless of all that, Slate told Meyers that the pandemic-related necessity of doing a lot of at-home voice work for, among other things, The Great North (whose second season premieres on Sunday) is something of a mixed blessing. “It’s such a bummer,” said Slate, explaining that the shared energy of a stacked comedy cast “super-eager to perform” just can’t be recaptured over a Zoom call where several of the onscreen squares are occupied by “lurking” silent Fox executives. Sure, imagining making the unseen and stolidly not-laughing “Todd” break up might be a motivating element, but one can only assume that being in a room with Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Paul Rust, Dulcé Sloan, Aparna Nancherla, and Megan Mullally is an experience one would miss.

Slate also noted that the pandemic has seen her and partner Ben Shattuck cancel their planned wedding a nerve-crunching three times now due to safety reasons (and not cold feet reasons), with the pair at least having to let go of some of the pre-wedding preciousness about the big day. “Let’s just kill this thing,” was Slate’s expressed enthusiasm level for the couple’s planned, scaled-down living room wedding, although she did hint that her love of personalized, bride-sung love anthems during the ceremony might make an appearance. (Again suggesting that the couple’s intimate familiarity with each other may see her incorporating some of the extremely messy details of delivery room functions into the lyrics.)

As for Alaska-set family animated comedy The Great North, where Slate plays Alanis Morissette-obsessed teenage daughter Judy, the actress told Meyers that actually getting to meet the singer went just about as awkwardly as one might expect. A Morissette superfan herself, Slate explained how her plans to play it super-cool when sitting down for a season one table read with the Canadian icon (playing herself, as Judy’s imaginary spirit-guide version of Alanis) went immediately awry. Sure, Slate says she resisted the urge to wear her Jagged Little Pill T-shirt to a professional work event, but, being Jenny Slate, enthusiasm and hero worship won out, with Slate eventually gushing hard, before begging for a selfie. Immortalizing the moment, Slate says the resulting picture sees her looking, as she put it, “like I have an itch and I’m trying to make it go away” with inadequately maintained facial nonchalance. Slate made the face for Meyers, and, if it was, indeed, not the expression of a blasé, seen-it-all peer, well, that’s understandable. It’s Alanis.