Jenny Slate Reveals She Tied the Knot on New Year’s Eve

Jenny Slate is married! The actress revealed that she and her longtime fiance Ben Shattuck tied the knot on New Year’s Eve in a new interview with Marie Claire. She said that they repeatedly postponed their nuptials due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally became too fed up to wait any longer.

“We were planning on a [wedding] that ended up being almost 200 people, and then now, it’s just our parents and siblings,” Slate said. “We each invited six friends… I actually like it. I like it better. I didn’t realize how the large thing was making me feel uncomfortable, a little bit. Just a little.” Slate said that she now thinks this small, intimate, impulsive ceremony made her happier than a high-occupancy ceremony would have.

Slate and Shattuck have been engaged since September of 2019, and it’s not clear how long they had been dating before that. She was previously married to filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp from 2012 to 2016. According to a report by Vulture, she then briefly dated actor Chris Evans.

Shattuck is an author and artist known for slice-of-life essays and evocative paintings. His first collected book, Six Walks In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, will be released on April 19, 2022.

Slate and Shattuck welcomed their first child while they waited for a chance to get married. Slate revealed her pregnancy on Dec. 10, 2020, during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, then on Feb. 3, 2021, she revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she had given birth. Their daughter is named Ida.

Slate reflected on her first year of motherhood in her new interview with Marie Claire as well. She said: “I only realized this after I had the baby, but I thought being a mother would be like a replica of my own mother’s experience with motherhood. At least, how I perceived it: in which she really, really, really loves us [Slate and her two sisters] so much, and also, she often seemed really stressed out, and at loose ends, and at her wits’ end, and exhausted, and splattered in clay.”

“Instead, I feel like it’s been the opposite of that for me,” Slate continued. “Not at all that it’s not difficult and challenging to have a newborn baby. There are so many profound challenges, but I’ve never been happier in my life. I feel like I can finally be what I want to be.”

Slate will be back on screen next month in the new Prime Video Original film I Want You Back, premiering on Friday, Feb. 11. After that, she has two more confirmed projects coming up this year, according to her IMDb page.