‘I can’t do it anymore’
Alex Edelman on ending ‘Just for Us,’ his hit show about antisemitism
LOS ANGELES – Not everyone wakes up to an avalanche of antisemitic tweets and then decides to attend a meeting of white nationalists in New York City. Because, well, not everyone is Alex Edelman, who has recounted the evening hundreds of times onstage in his hilarious and thought-provoking hit show Just for Us.
And after spending six years revising his incisive 90-minute set (with the help of numerous comedy legends) and performing it all over the world, he’s ending it with an encore run in Los Angeles – just before the April 6 release of the corresponding HBO special, filmed during the show’s run on Broadway last summer.
“Part of the reason this show is ending is because I can’t do it anymore,” he told the LA Times. “Doing it can be a wrenching experience, but I’ve loved it.”
Ahead of his final seven performances of Just for Us at the Mark Taper Forum, the comedian participated in an exit interview of sorts, where he talked about the trick to recounting the time his Orthodox family celebrated Christmas, the loss of his director and close collaborator Adam Brace, and the to-do list for starting a new show – one that possibly addresses the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic that’s fascinated him since childhood. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
You attended the white nationalist meeting in 2018. When did you realize it’d make good onstage material?
I didn’t realize it until other comedians and other people pushed me toward it and told me it was a good idea. I’m an idiot – I just thought it was a fun story to tell friends. I told Nick Callas [a fellow stand-up comedian] the story, and he made a joke about a detail in the story, and I thought, that’s a pretty good joke. Then I did it on stage as a three-minute joke while opening for a comedian friend of mine who, I would say, I didn’t think had my best interests at heart. That comedian went, “That story about that apartment is really weird, huh?” and I thought, “Wow, they feel a little threatened by that joke.”
Then Adam clinched it. I told him the story, and he was like, “There’s something there.” It was a work in progress through 2018, and even though it won awards and got good reviews, it went to bed for all of 2019. I desperately wanted someone to make it as a special then. Thank God nobody did, because it needed more work. I’ve told this specific story of the meeting steadily since 2021 that it’s become the memory, which is fascinating.
You’re now known to ask comedy greats for advice. Whose words of wisdom helped you most?
Steve Martin gave me a tag [for a joke], Stephen Colbert gave me a performance suggestion, and Jerry Seinfeld pointed out something that got a laugh every time but was really a flaw of the show. Billy Crystal gave me the advice to move from a handheld [microphone] to a headset, which I wasn’t sure about because I thought the show would lose its stand-up roots. By the way, I pried that note out of him. I knew from looking at him during the show that his brain was going, and I wanted what was in there. Not only did he offer that advice, he came back when we taped the special.
Adam’s instincts were almost always right, and it eats at me a little bit that it took me longer to come around to them than it probably should have. He was militant about prioritizing comedy and cutting distractions. I was once arguing for a detail that I thought was pretty good and belonged in the show. I said, “It’s true!” and he said, “Well, it’s a shame it isn’t more entertaining!”
A few weeks after Adam passed away, a woman came up to me after one of the Broadway shows and said, in front of a whole bunch of other people, “Do you think your show would be better if your director was still alive?” But the funny thing is, if you think about it, it’s not a cruel thing to say. The answer is undoubtedly, yes. He was my collaborator, and I loved him, and he made my shows better.
I love when you announce to the audience, “I’m only telling you stuff I think you’d enjoy. If you really knew me, you might not like me.” Why include that?
It’s about performance. The show is based on this real-life story, but I think it’s made so much better by the fact that there is artistic license, which I’ve always been really comfortable with. Because truly, the curatorial decisions that you make as a comedian are artistic licenses. Your biases, your prejudices, they always show, and examining those is what makes it interesting.
Like, what if I have opinions on complex political issues, or the way that people should move in the world? Would I still be afforded the same level of empathy that I get from an audience? I have a line in the show that isn’t in the special because it’s one of those things that just belongs in the live show. I say, “I could lose half of you with one line about Israel right now, the other half with two.”
The truth is, our goodwill is sometimes conditional. So that line is about the reality that our goodwill is sometimes conditional, and how we court goodwill from each other and choose to give each other empathy.
You’ve regularly met audiences in lobbies afterward. How long did you usually chat?
Five minutes to an hour and a half. I don’t mind it at all. It’s informative to the special to know what people take away from it. In some places that are slightly more exurban or rural, some people were quibbling with the politics in the sense that people were siding with the folks in the meeting over me a little bit. And people often tell me how timely the show is, but people have been telling me that since 2018, because that’s when [the] Tree of Life [synagogue attack] happened.
The only silly question I get is, “Do non-Jews get it?” Of course non-Jews get it. The show is about antisemitism, but it’s really about assimilation. One guy told me, “I’m from a family of musicians, so I understood everything you’re talking about.” People receive it as comedy; it’s for everyone. I was in a part of the UK where there aren’t a lot of Jews, and pretty much the whole audience was waiting there to chat.
Not to be mawkish, but one of the things I like about the show is that if I saw it when I was 18, I think I would’ve enjoyed it. It’s special for me when a kid in a yarmulke comes up to me and is pretty psyched.
You’ve previously said that you want to perform something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is that the plan, soon or eventually?
Yes. My agent at the time I said that said to me, “Oh, that’s great. We’ll just call it career suicide.” And [while performing Just for Us,] I’ve had people from both sides of the political spectrum asking me why the show isn’t about Israel and Palestine, which is interesting because, obviously, like everybody else, I’m watching that with horror. But I would love to.
There are certain theatrical forms that can speak really well to a big issue and ask really productive questions. If I can figure out a way to wrap my arms around that comedically, that’d be interesting and important and good. I don’t know that I can, but part of the reason this show is ending is so I can tackle bigger challenges like that and have the brain space to do it. So I don’t know. But maybe. Hopefully.