Eirik Evjen(NEW YORK) — In the new indie film The Sunlit Night, Jenny Slate stars as Frances, a painter who escapes her life in New York City to take a job in Arctic Norway, where the sun never quite sets.
Shooting in the remote location had its positives and negatives, but much like her character, Slate says the experience allowed her to become more in tune with herself.
“It’s just so far away,” she tells ABC Audio. “And what I felt the first time I went and what I continue to feel is that, I’m really happy to be in a space where I don’t recognize anything and I can recognize myself a little better.”
The fact that the sun never really set was just an added bonus for Slate.
“I actually prefer to sleep in the sunlight,” she says. “And I’m very afraid of the dark. And I’ve never really gotten over it. So I was pumped.”
There were challenges on set, though, namely sharing the screen with a baby goat. In the film, the goat is a frequent visitor to the trailer where Frances is staying.
“That baby goat was just a goat from a farm, it wasn’t like a trained movie goat wearing a diaper,” Slate says. “And it completely messed up the trailer immediately.”
She adds, “I mean, I don’t think I’d like to, like, go through that again. But I also kind of chilled out after a while and would just be like, well, I guess I’m just surrounded by goat turds and I will shower when I get home and I just have to just keep going.”
The Sunlit Night, also starring Alex Sharp, Zach Galifianakis and Gillian Anderson, is available on VOD today.
By Andrea Tuccillo
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