Zoe Lister-Jones’ new Roku series “Slip” takes the fascination with the metaverse to a whole new dimension… courtesy of some earth-shattering orgasms that take her out of this world. Literally.
“Slip” focuses on Lister-Jones’ character, Mai Cannon, whose life is “a super normal dream where nothing really happens” and the excitement occurs when she is dreaming. Or is his dream world reality? “You just need to wake up, but then you realize that there is nothing to wake up to because the dream is happening while you are awake, sleeping to find meaning and waking up to lose it, she says at the beginning of the Roku series. “And all you want to do is go to sleep to dream some more.”
The series — which Lister-Jones created, wrote, directed, and starred in — is both funny and deep, which is rarely the case. She wrote the entire first season during the COVID lockdown, as she was battling depression and “a sense of tightness, unease in my own life, and I didn’t know how to navigate it.”
“For me, as a writer, every project begins with some sort of existential question/crisis that I am personally facing, and I find that I use writing to answer some of those difficult questions for me. To try to find answers we resist. What we do in life and with the desire for more. It all got louder in quarantine, obviously,” she told TheWrap. “It became impossible to ignore those voices.”
Lister-Jones admits that she is the kind of person who will meet someone and, even if she feels little connection, she will carry on in her mind an entire life together. “And I thought it was a really fun conceit to be able to see what those fantasies would look like, to use intercourse as a means of transportation, because I’m also really exploring female desire and female sexuality.” Was interested in. In a way that was really central to the narrative.
And that’s it. Whenever Mae has an orgasm, she wakes up the next morning to find that she has been transported to a parallel universe in which her bed partner is her soul mate and her life is quite different.
“It takes courage to really explore all aspects of ourselves, which is, metaphorically, I think this show is about the hungry ghosts that live inside all of us. You know, the insatiable urge to be human.” Temperance is what and how we deal with all those ‘what ifs’ that haunt us in life, Lister-Jones said.”[That] I think, again, that kind of came into hyper focus in quarantine. There was such a nostalgic quality as, ‘Should I marry my high school boyfriend?’ How can I find that sense of inner security and balance?
Although the show hasn’t been greenlit for a second season, they have greenlighted the writers’ room, so all the scripts are written for a second year. She teases, “Without any spoilers, this is a Bats-T second season and it also has sex as its propelling force.” “In Season 1, Mai is not her own agent of change or self-discovery. She is being sent from world to world and she is trying to catch up. In Season 2, I wanted to create a story where she is guarding her ship.
“Slip” is certainly a wild ride, showcasing Lister-Jones’ talents as a writer, director and actor who brings a depth of emotion – whatever it may be – to every scene.
“If you want to have fun and go on a really wild adventure, but be turned on at the same time,” this is the show for you, she said. “I really wanted to make a show that was sexy and sex forward, and that was still irreverent and funny and escapist, and tackling a very universal question that we all face, no matter what relationship we’re in.” Whether we are in or not how we find happiness and what we do with all our desires for more.
You can watch our full interview with Lister-Jones in the video at the top.
A complete season of “Slip” is now streaming on Roku.
