Actress and comedian Jenny Slate is the subject of a Vulture cover story published today (March 21), and in it, the Zootopia star discusses the breakup of her under-the-radar relationship with Chris Evans.

Slate and Evans, who met during the first "chemistry read" for their upcoming movie Gifted, dated for about ten months. News of their possible union first made headlines in May 2016 after their very flirtatious banter during a visit to actress Anna Faris' Unqualified podcast, not least because Slate had recently split from her then husband (editor-director Dean Fleischer-Camp, with whom she made the Marcel the Shell shorts). But Slate and Evans were just good friends at first, and their relationship didn't start on set.

"To be quite honest, I didn’t think I was his type," Slate said. "Eventually, when it was like, Oh, you have these feelings for me?, I was looking around like, Is this a prank? I mean, I understand why I think I’m beautiful, but if you've had a certain lifestyle and I’m a very, very different type of person — I don’t want to be an experiment."

As Vulture's Jada Yuan puts it, "The internet went wild over their apples-and-oranges compatibility," because this is how novel the idea of a hunky onscreen superhero portrayer dating a smart, non-Barbielike, professionally-funny woman apparently is, still. The two made few public appearances during their time together. 

"We used to talk about what kinds of animals we were," says Slate. "Chris said it’s like I’m a chick riding on a St. Bernard’s head. We’re an odd match."

And yes, dating someone as famous and attractive as Evans did involve being frequently approached by woman in public, "being like, 'Oh my God, is that Chris Evans? He’s so hot!' You’re like, 'How dare you? That’s my boyfriend. But yes, he’s so hot.'"

Jenny and Chris also lived together while they dated, evidently, because the Parks and Rec actress said she crashed with friends in January after their split.

"I watched You’ve Got Mail so many times, it was unbelievable," she said of her post-breakup time. As for why Slate and Evans broke up, she points to two main factors: that their lives are "really, really different" both in their passions and fame levels ("I have more freedom because I’m not Captain America. I’m mostly a cartoon"), and the fact that she hadn't yet emotionally worked through her separation from Fleischer-Camp.

"Even though we had an amicable divorce, I think that’s still something that you need to mourn. When you get separated from somebody that you actually care about, it is the destruction of a belief system. That is really, really sad," Slate said. In dealing with her rapid life transitions, "I just didn’t have the tools. And I didn’t think very hard about that, to be honest. I wanted to step into the light. Chris is a sunny, loving, really fun person, and I didn’t really understand why I should be prudent."

Are we allowed to wish they'd get back together?

Read Jenny Slate's full profile over at Vulture (and watch Slate's movie Obvious Child, because it's pretty great).

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