Nearly 15 years later, Jenny Slate doesn’t appear to have any hard feelings about her short-lived Saturday Night Live run.

The actress recently explained she was “embarrassed and heartbroken” the NBC sketch comedy show chose not to renew her contract following her debut on Season 35, but she’s now proud of that early part of her onscreen career.

Recalling that she “was kind of limping along, emotionally, just kind of embarrassed” at the time, Slate explained on The Last Laugh podcast how she currently feels: “I think it’s so fucking cool that I sort of touched that dream. I’m proud of myself.”

Slate added, “It’s almost magical, in this weird way, to think about it. There’s a lot of weird rewards that come from situations that we might think are more shadowy.”

Although Slate’s premature dismissal from the cast in 2010 was thought to be a...