Alex Edelman Talks Wrapping Six-Year Journey With ‘Just For Us,’ Jonathan Glazer’s Polarizing Oscars Speech & Embodying Empathy The World Needs

deadline.com:

On Easter Sunday, comedian Alex Edelman completed his final performance of Just for Us, bringing six life-changing years with the solo show to a close. “After the show, I had a real sense of like, ‘Okay, it’s done now,’ and I really felt a deep connection to all of the people that have worked on it…and seen it, and all the people who gave it gentle or firm nudges,” the NY-based comedian shared earlier this afternoon. “I just felt the real comet’s tale of people and things and experiences that have come behind the show, and it was a sort of equal parts mixture of gratitude and sadness.” First put on its feet all the way back in 2018, the show’s plot is thrust into motion as Edelman recalls being subjected to antisemitic comments on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Rather than blocking the offenders, he chose to keep tabs on them, until the moment when a tweet crossed his path that he couldn’t let be: “Hey, if you live in NYC and you have questions about your whiteness, come to 441 27th Avenue tomorrow night at 9:15.” It was thus that this Boston native, raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, wound up at a white nationalist gathering in Queens that left him contemplating themes of empathy, identity, belonging and community.

Set to hit HBO tomorrow in the form of an awards-contending comedy special, the show centered on this stranger-than-fiction experience of Edelman’s opened off-Broadway in 2022 before making its way to Broadway and touring around the world, winding down with a recent run of shows at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum.

In conversation with Deadline, Edelman reflects on takeaways from his experience with Just for Us, and the creative contributions of its original director Adam Brace — his longtime