The US standup on why his show on white nationalists resonated so widely, being taught writing by Zadie Smith and working on a new spinoff of The Office
Alex Edelman’s brilliant, slowly eviscerating standup special, Just for Us, tells the story of how he – a young Jewish man – ended up crashing a meeting of white nationalists in New York. The show started life in 2018 at the Soho theatre in London and at the Edinburgh festival, a collaboration with his friend, director Adam Brace, who died last year aged 43. But Just for Us really exploded in the US, where this year it won Edelman a Tony and an Emmy and a place on the Time list of the 100 most influential people of 2024. A longtime UK resident – and Radio 4 favourite – Edelman is 35 and now lives in New York and LA.
You campaigned hard for Kamala Harris, meeting voters in swing states. How are you feeling now?
I’m very sad, but the funny thing is I’m also quite optimistic. I went door-to-door in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Minnesota and places I don’t live, and met a bunch of people who aren’t like me. There’s something very sacred about standing on someone’s doorstep talking about the direction they want the country to go in. And obviously the result is not the result I was working for, but to have those real-life moments face-to-face was special.
You first performed Just for Us in 2018. How did the show evolve over the years?
Well, I’m not even Jewish any more, I’m a devout Mormon – I’m joking. What changed? Look, a lot. The truth, from a craft perspective, it got more focused. And I homed in on what I was asking and what I was interested in. There was George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. There was the Tree of Life [synagogue] shooting in Pittsburgh. I went to a conference on Jewish identity that shaped a lot of it, too. And there was the Covid pandemic, which made certain things feel more important and other things feel less important.
There’s a line in Just for Us that the material “barely works if you’re not from the Upper West Side”. Clearly this isn’t the case. Why has it resonated in different places?
People think the show is about antisemitism. The show is about assimilation. The only dumb question I ever get asked – it’s only one – is: “Does the show work with non-Jews?” Like, does My Big Fat Greek Wedding only work with Greeks? Does Everything Everywhere All at Once only work with the children of Asian immigrants? When I was doing the show in Wales, someone came up and said: “Oh my God, that show was written completely for me.” I said: “Why?” And they said: “I lived in Milton Keynes and I always wondered if I was Welsh enough.” The show is for anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider.
You’re a very physical performer – did you have to get very fit to do it?
I loved the physical element of it. I got thousands of steps from doing the show, and I felt so energised by it. God, it was so much fucking fun. But by the end on Broadway, my body was just breaking down; I was in so much agony, because truly it is such a physically demanding gig. And I was sad about Adam [Brace], and found it really hard some days to do the show. So after it ended, I was in pretty rough physical shape. But it was the best thing in the world, and also the hardest.
You just described yourself as an optimist. That’s the same word your friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge used about you in her Time write-up. Is that key to your personality?
Well, I always think the worst is going to happen, but I always think we can do something about it. So is that an optimist or a pessimist? But I never give up on people. No one is beyond connection, no matter what. And I’ve found myself in lots of situations I don’t necessarily belong in, and I’ve found connection and community in those places. So I think that she describes me as that because, ultimately, I’ve been the beneficiary of a lot of grace.
Zadie Smith taught you creative writing at New York University. What did you take from her course?
She is obviously the most gifted novelist, but she’s a better teacher even than she is a writer. She is the best teacher I’ve ever had and I had really great professors: Darin Strauss, Nathan Englander. I’m so disgustingly privileged when it comes to academia in that sense and Zadie is certainly a prime example of that.
You made a few shows for Radio 4, including Millennial and Alex Edelman’s Peer Group. On Just for Us, you explain radio comedies to the audience as “podcasts for the dying”.
I love my Radio 4 shows! My Peer Group was a show about young people, and then they were like: “Do you want to do another series?” And I was like: “I’m 34, my back hurts, you need to go find an actual young person now.” But I think more young people secretly listen to Radio 4 than is advertised – they just don’t call in to complain, saying: “Alex Edelman says ‘like’ as a comma, it’s a verbal tic.” And they’re not wrong, but it’s hysterical: I love the constituency of intellects and ninnies who listen to Radio 4.
You are writing on and acting in a new spin-off of The Office. Reports suggest it focuses on an attempt to revive a “dying historic midwestern newspaper”. What can you tell us?
I can’t tell you many details, but I will say that Tim Key is on it, another Edinburgh stalwart, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Domhnall Gleeson, those are all Brits or Irishes, and it’s a wonderful gig. It’s extremely illuminating.
Is it right that your next standup show will be on the Israel-Palestine conflict?
That may need to take a break, because frankly, we’re in the middle of a thing happening, and it’s hard to write about something while it’s happening. But that conflict has gone on for a long time, and it doesn’t look like it’s ending in the next couple of days. It’s been on most of my lifetime, of my parents’ lifetime. But I’ll always do standup. It’s a way for me to process things and it’s my first love.
Alex Edelman: Just for Us is on Sky Comedy and Now
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