Good best friends onscreen have become an endangered species as big-city rom-coms are rarely made. When such films appear, women protagonists often navigate modern dating without a solid confidante. The role of the best friend demands conveying full humanity without cutesiness or one-dimensionality. Jenny Slate delivers a nuanced performance as Nikki in Dying for Sex. The series follows Molly, who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and pursues sexual exploration, while Nikki, a disorganized actress and sex-positive confidante, shelters and guides her. Slate's portrayal adds specific nuances, anxieties, and sadnesses that elevate the series into a two-hander and quasi-love story.
When it does, in projects likeMaterialistsand , as some have pointed out, the women protagonists tend to hack their way through the modern dating scene without a solid confidante by their side. It's too bad, because the role of the best friend is deceptively difficult. It requires someone able to convey the full humanity of a character just off from the center of the narrative without overplaying the cutesiness or underplaying their depth.
Dying for Sexisn't exactly a rom-com - though you could piece apart its structure and make that argument - but it has given us a best-friend Ur-performance from Slate as Nikki. Opposite the great Michelle Williams, whose Molly receives a terminal cancer diagnosis that spurs her on a quest of sexual exploration, Nikki is, in many ways, a classic best-friend type, a disorganized actress with a quick wit and an enthusiastic air of sex positivity.
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