Jenny Slate And Chris Evans: What Really Went Wrong?
Jenny Slate and Chris Evans are finito. That's right, the coupling you didn't know you wanted between Marcel the Shell and Captain America has come to an end — again. The actress and comedian known for Obvious Child, alternative comedy, and one of Saturday Night Live's most memorable F-bombs, and the two-time Johnny Storm threw in the towel on their second go-round at love.
Their first relationship lasted ten months before they ended things just when we were starting to get used to seeing them together. After putting things on pause for a little under a year, the two reunited, but their fling only lasted around five months. Neither star has spoken publicly about the split as of this writing, except for Evans who simply told The New York Times in March 2018 that it "recently ended."
So what happened to make the duo call it quits two times? Was their opposites-attract romance doomed from the start? It's complicated. Read on to find out what really went wrong.
The fame gap was too much
Despite the benefits that come from everyone in the world knowing your name and face, superstardom has a tendency to cause collateral damage. One of the biggest drawbacks? A severe and often unwelcome invasion of privacy. Though Jenny Slate has been known in comedy circles for years for roles in Kroll Show, Saturday Night Live, and Bored to Death, Chris Evans is an international face of the Marvel movie machine. The difference in their profiles was so dramatic that Slate eventually decided she needed to get off the roller coaster. "This is what I needed to do to feel normal: to be alone," she said in a surprisingly candid March 2017 interview with Vulture, during which she spoke at length about their first split.
She was also put off by the, shall we say, familiarity his many adoring fans showed coming up to him in public. According to Slate, these encounters would be awkward for her, as fans approached "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.'"
Past relationships loomed large
Slate and Evans first became close on the set of the movie Gifted, which they began filming in late 2015. Their friendship started platonically, as Slate was still married to her husband, Dean Fleischer-Camp. Still, Evans made a big impression. "I remember him saying to me, 'You're going to be one of my closest friends,'" Slate said. "I was just like, 'Man, I f***ing hope this isn't a lie, because I'm going to be devastated if this guy isn't my friend.'"
They began dating in the summer, soon after Slate's divorce from Fleischer-Camp in May 2016. To hear her tell it, it may have been too soon: "Even though we had an amicable divorce, I think that's still something that you need to mourn." Which is fair — but there are far worse rebounds on this Earth than Captain America.
It's still hard for them to talk about it
While they put on their best faces in the press after their first split, there were indications from the both of them that the relationship didn't end awesomely. The emotions were still very raw. Chris Evans said during an interview with Esquire that he was "steering clear of those questions," and according to the interviewer, you could "almost feel his heart pinch."
When asked about whether or not the relationship ended on good terms, Jenny Slate demured, declining to say it ended well. "We're not on bad terms, but we haven't really seen each other, spoken a lot," she said, avoiding too many details, but hinting that for the moment, things might be cold. "I'd love to be his friend one day, but we threw down pretty hard."
Post-second breakup, only Evans has spoken publicly about it — sort of. In a profile of the Avengers: Infinity War actor, The New York Times reported that he acknowledged the recent end of the relationship, and indicated that during his time with Slate he's been "studying how to better conduct himself as an ally to women in his profession."
Slate has been wanting to start fresh
According to the actress, her life has seen her go from relationship to relationship with little downtime for herself. So she started 2017 with a hard reset — out with the old, in with the new. In the wake of her breakup, she got a new apartment, sold or gave away most of her possessions, and listened to a lot of Alanis Morissette — you know, the usual.
"I was like, 'You need all new things," she told Vulture. "You are a working woman. Maybe this is an indulgence, but just start over.'"
Slate also spoke about how she envisioned her next romantic partner, saying, "Whoever is the next person is going to have to respect that I had a husband who I loved and this boyfriend who I loved so much, and I don't want to have to act like they weren't important." So, it's kind of unsurprising that "next person" turned out to be Evans again.
They may not have been too compatible to begin with
One of the reasons the Jenny Slate and Chris Evans romance made so many people stop and stare was the perceived differences in their public profiles. To put it in retrograde, immature high school terms, this was like the quarterback and the drama nerd stealing the show at the prom.
But while those differences may have been exciting, they weren't necessarily meant to last. On top of the fame gap, Evans was more of an energetic sports and adrenaline person than Slate says she could ever be. "Chris is a different speed than me," Slate told Vulture, referring to the actor's penchant for sports, skydiving, and having lots of fun. "This is annoying," she said she recalled thinking. "This guy's like a sports guy. He's the kid that likes P.E."
But this enthusiasm charmed her, to a point. "I first really liked Chris as a person because he is so unpretentious. He is a straight-up 35-year-old man who wants to play games. That's it."
Evans has a history of short, sweet romances
One of America's most famous men has had a lot of luck in love if you count sheer numbers, but his relationships have tended to be off-and-on affairs that either don't last long or linger in a purgatory of "it's complicated." Among the high-profile women Chris has been connected to are Jessica Biel, whom he was with for five years, Christina Ricci, Emmy Rossum, Sandra Bullock, Vida Guerra, and Minka Kelly.
"I'm a pretty romantic guy," the actor told People in 2015. But that romantic mindset doesn't necessarily translate into being great in relationships. "I don't necessarily limit the notion of romance to people, though," he elaborated. "I think I have a romantic relationship to art, to music, to nature."
He then revealed one of his most romantic memories: a three-week camping trip by himself. "It was very romantic," he contends, "but maybe not in the conventional sense."
Slate wanted to focus on her own career
It's natural for actors to date other actors; who else would better understand (and tolerate) the weird, invasive rhythms of the showbiz world? According to Chris Evans, who's well known for his many celebrity romances, "There's a certain shared life experience that is tough for someone else who's not in this industry to kind of wrap their head around" (via Esquire).
But when one person has a far higher profile than the other, it can get awkward. Slate says she's using Evans' towering fame as a form of encouragement and is challenging herself to take her own career to that next level. "I don't want people to ask me more about my love life because of him than they ask me about my work," she said at the time of their first breakup (via Vulture).
Slate also said she was redoubling her efforts on doing stand-up comedy, acting, and working on a Marcel the Shell full-length feature with her ex-husband and creative partner, Dean Fleischer-Camp. Evans, meanwhile, had years to go cranking out more blockbusters with his fellow Avengers.
Could this be the reason their second shot at dating lasted half as long as the first?
The second time wasn't a charm
Though Jenny Slate was remarkably open about her first breakup from Chris Evans, she didn't make a big commotion about it when they got back together. In fact, it was only after they were spotted together having dinner in Atlanta in October 2017 that people also started to notice them openly flirting on Twitter.
About a month later, Entertainment Tonight declared them "officially back together," citing a tweet from Slate in which she references her boyfriend and a tweet video from Evans in which Slate can be heard in the background. People then reported that Slate and Evans spent Christmas together and even went apartment shopping together soon after that, indicating that they'd picked things up right where they left off. But with Evans' revelation to The New York Times, we now know they're already off again. So what went wrong this second time?
The truth is we just don't know as of yet. But given Slate's track record of candor, as well as her personal philosophy of "I've never thought to keep anything private. That's not what I'm like," we feel confident we'll find out soon enough.