Zoe Lister-Jones is charting a multidimensional career. In one world, she’s recognizable as a sitcom fixture from her time on Whitney, numerous appearances on New Girl as Fawn Moscato, and as a part of the ensemble on the clever but prematurely ended Life In Pieces. More recently, you may have seen her on the big screen in either Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid or Zach Braff’s A Good Person. But it’s Lister-Jones’ latest project, Slip, that bridges her work as an actress and her long track record as a storyteller who has previously written and directed indie standouts This Is How It Ends (which she co-wrote and co-directed with her ex-husband, Daryl Wein) and Band-Aid as well as the reboot of The Craft (The Craft: Legacy).
Debuting today on the Roku channel, Slip is a show that tells a story in 7-parts of a woman uncomfortably comfortable in her life as a married art curator until, one night, everything changes after a steamy tryst so powerful it splits the timeline, throwing Lister-Jones’ character into an entirely different version of her life. To say this show should appeal to fans of multi-dimensional dramedies with their own hearty focus on angst, big questions, and the pursuit of happiness is natural, but it also fails to give Slip its flowers for its focus on sexuality as a key part of the equation when it comes to marriage, love, and fulfillment. Here, Uproxx talks with the actress/writer/director on that point, why the show scared the shit out of her, and whether always wondering about what’s on the other side of the fence is a good thing.
What’s the genesis of this show?
I think all of my writing starts with some sort of central existential question that I’m personally contending with. And about a year before quarantine, that was this sort of larger question around the insatiable nature of human suffering (Laughs). Of like what we do with our desire for more no matter what stage or station in life we’re in, and the what-ifs that tend to plague us. I think all of those questions came into such hyper-focus in quarantine when we were really forced to look at where we were and where we wanted to be. And I think I also really wanted to explore sex and sexuality, especially through a woman’s perspective, and have that be a central propulsive force throughout the show. And so it was really the intersection of those two things that birthed Slip and this multiversal sex romp. (Laughs)
(Laughs) Obviously, the character is married but she’s wondering what’s on the other side of the fence, essentially. Not to get too personal, but is that something in your own life that you’ve wrestled with? I mean, I’ve been married for a long time and everybody has those thoughts. It’s a natural part of being in a long-term relationship.
I think I’ve always been really interested in delving into the nuances and complexities of relationships. I think they’re sort of impenetrable when it comes to trying to figure them out and how to do them well. And I think the questions are always similar, but I try to find a different way in every time.
You know, I was in a relationship for a very long time and in quarantine separated from my ex-husband. And so when I was writing this, I’m sure that I was wrestling with those questions myself. And I think though, regardless of whether you’re in a relationship or not, those questions are so loud, you know? (Those questions) about what path to take to achieve a sense of satisfaction or groundedness or happiness. And my friends who are single covet the lives of people in relationships and my friends who are in relationships are envious of those who are single. And I think that the grass always being greener is just such a universal trait that I wanted to see what it would look like if those fantasies were played out to their often disastrous conclusions.
Larger philosophical question. Do you feel like that want to constantly examine and think about what’s on the other side of the fence, does that come from a place of fear over not exploring or just curiosity?
I mean, I would say it’s fear. I would say FOMO is very real and alive in us all. And I think especially coming out of quarantine, we were all forced to really face those questions in a more acute way about the paths not taken and what those paths would bring to us if we were courageous enough to explore them or if we had been in the past. So yeah, I guess it’s both curiosity and fear. (Laughs)
Is that a good thing for you in terms of your work? Do you allow that to propel you with your work, that mix of fear and curiosity about what’s next, especially creatively?
Totally. I mean, I think I always try to go toward the thing that scares me most. As an artist, I think it’s the only way to grow, even though it’s generally not the most comfortable and requires taking risks on yourself and putting yourself in harm’s way sometimes. (Laughs) But I do think with every project I try to do something that scares the shit out of me. And I also really try to not work from a place of fear because I think fear-based decision-making, especially when you start to work in the studio system, is kind of all too common. And I don’t really think good art comes out of fear-based decision-making. And so I try my best.
And I think Slip was a really amazing example of that because although I was working with a streamer with Roku, they gave me so much freedom as a filmmaker. I mean, I sent them all seven episodes of the series and they gave me a green light without one script note. So from start to finish, there was no fear in terms of the fear that was being projected onto me. There was implicit trust. And that is such an incredible playground to be working within.
Obviously, there’s pressure. It’s your show, you’re the lead, you’re writing and directing, so there’s that pressure. But I’m curious what specifically there was about this that scared the shit out of you?
Well, I think the brazenness of the sexuality, I think the fact that I was putting my body on the line. Not only as a storyteller was I wanting to push the bounds of the way that female sexuality was portrayed on camera, but I was using my body to do so. And I think, you know, I’d never worked in television as a creator. And to be wearing this many hats is really a test of endurance. (Laughs) I mean, just shot-listing 250 pages is a really daunting task that really scared me. But it’s amazing to meet those challenges and to see actually how enlivening they are.
Why was it important to ground this and make all these worlds feel like maybe she might want to live there for a minute?
I guess it’s exciting to me that there are infinite possibilities for happiness, or at least that one could inhabit many different lives and selves successfully to a certain degree. And I think having the openness or the willingness to know that, to me, is comforting. And I wanted each relationship to feel really lived in, especially because we’re on Mae’s journey. And she is such a fish out of water from episode to episode, that the worlds that she’s being propelled into, I wanted to feel really grounded and to have the texture of long-term relationships even though she’s new to them. And I have my actors to thank for that. I have an incredible cast who all really grounded those wild scenarios for me.
With Slip and This Is How It Ends, you’re using certain devices that pull from different genres, which I really appreciate. I’m curious about the appeal to you as a storyteller to tell stories like this where there are multiple universes or existential crises and your character is talking to their former self.
I love fantastical narratives that are really grounded. I love tonal deviations that feel earned as a viewer. And so I think that excites me as a creator. And I think there’s so much content, that I try my best to find ways into universal questions or themes that might poke out above the fray. And I think when you can personify something that feels otherworldly, it’s so exciting. There’s a reason why genre films and television shows are so popular, there’s an escapist quality that’s really exciting. But there’s also something about the possibility of something more that we might not be aware of that I think is helpful as we face the bleak realities of our day-to-day existence.
Where does that affection come from? What’s your film and TV fan origin story? Are there projects that really mean something to you that you’re not necessarily paying tribute to, but that inspired you in terms of your affection for that kind of storytelling?
Well, my mom is a video artist and she exposed me to a lot of European art house cinema and American independent cinema. And so I think that had a huge influence on me. And her work was more experimental in nature, but it was all very personal. And I think I learned from a young age that art could be personal, it could be deeply personal. So yeah, I would say that was a huge influence.
When I was preparing for Slip, I tried not to watch too many multiverse series or films. I guess I wanted it to stand on its own. And to me, it feels more like a fable than adhering to a formula of classic sci-fi canon. But I did watch a lot of ’80s and ’90s erotic cinema. That was the sort of height of the era of Paul Verhoeven and those kinds of films. (I did that) to see, I think the legacy that I was building on and also that I might want to subvert, especially as a woman behind the lens while being in front of it. And that was a really interesting education because my mom being a feminist, she didn’t really expose me to those films. I think she found them very problematic. And so yeah, that was really an interesting way in for me to look at how I wanted to portray sexuality.
Just in terms of story, or in terms of visual?
I think more in terms of the visual vocabulary that I was using and the way that sex scenes were being shot. And there’s lots of dialogue around the male gaze, but what does it really look like and how can a person subvert it? You know? And how much of that gaze have we, regardless of our politics, sort of absorbed, you know? And now we understand that to be hot. I wanted the show to turn people on. I did want to make an erotic show. I wanted to live in sex scenes that felt real and that might feel uncomfortably long (Laughs). And I guess wanted to remove the element of voyeurism as best I could.
‘Slip’ is available to stream on the Roku channel now.
