The Elegant, Utterly Original Comedy of Alex Edelman
A conversation with the comedian on writing for laughs, the jokes he won’t tell, and the best advice he’s gotten from his comedic heroes
In the long and checkered history of possibly terrible impulse decisions, here’s one for the ages: A few years ago, the comedian Alex Edelman decided on a whim to show up uninvited to a casual meeting of white nationalists at an apartment in New York City, and pose as one of them. Why? He was curious. He wanted to see what it would be like to be on the inside of a gathering that would never have knowingly included him, given that he is Jewish. The events of that night became fodder for his one-man show Just for Us, which has toured across the United States and overseas in recent years, and opens on Broadway tonight.
I first saw Just for Us in December, and have often thought of it since then, not only because it is hilarious, which it is, but also because I have rarely encountered a piece of comedy so sophisticated—or, as the comedian Mike Birbiglia put it to me, one with such an “elegantly light touch.” Birbiglia produced the show’s most recent run, off-Broadway. He never had any intention of producing, but felt he had to help make it possible for more people to see Edelman. “You can’t have a story that good and not have everyone hear that story,” Birbiglia told me. “It’s the only show where I’ve recommended it to probably 300 people and not a single person has said they don’t like it.”
One of the things Birbiglia admires about Edelman is “his tenacity for considering revision or rethinking things that already work,” he told me. “Most people, when their show is really well received, they’re like, ‘I’m done.’ I always admire people who never view work as done.” I recently sat down with Edelman to talk about the mechanics of writing, what makes something funny, and the best advice he’s gotten from his comedic heroes. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Adrienne LaFrance: I want to ask you about your writing process, but first let’s talk about Broadway.
Alex Edelman: Oh my God.
LaFrance: It must feel surreal.
Edelman: People are like, “Is this a lifelong dream?” And I’m like, “Yes.” But also, I never dreamed of this.
LaFrance: It never would have even occurred to you.
Edelman: It would be like if you were jogging and someone’s like, “Do you want to jog … on the moon?” You’d be like, “What.”
LaFrance: So you’re hilarious, which is of course a prerequisite. But what struck me about Just for Us is the quality of the writing—how layered it is, and the sophistication of how you return to various jokes over the course of the show. I’m curious how you approach the writing process.
Edelman: So laughs are No. 1. Laughs have to go into everything. Everything else can go. So then you’re like, Okay, I’m getting laughs. I’m still doing the show. What else do I want? Mike Birbiglia saw the show in its old form, and he was like, “B+.” And I was like, “B+?!” And he was like, “You need to think more deeply about XYZ.”
LaFrance: What was the XYZ for him?
Edelman: The story of the meeting is the star. But Mike said, “Find what it says about you.” So imagine you’re writing a poem and you’re trying to service the subtext. Or imagine—sometimes TV writers will say, “Okay, here’s the plot of the episode, but what is the episode about?” Like, what is Seinfeld about? People are all like, “Seinfeld’s about nothing.” But Seinfeld is not about nothing. Seinfeld is about the relationships between complicated people. Seinfeld is about what it’s like to live in a city, what it’s like to be an uncompromising personality in a world where that’s not suitable. There are so many different things that a thing can be about, right? So you start thinking about what it’s about, and then you sort of gently buttress the thing with clauses. And if the clauses can be funny, then, oh my God. So I started massaging things, and—I’m sure you’re like this too—I love a well-written line. A line that just nails you. A line that just gets you right here (Gestures between the ribs.). For everyone that line is different, but I love to try to hit everyone in the John Updike bone.
LaFrance: Do you think it all comes down to surprising people?
Edelman: I think so. Or just being really apt. But yes, I think surprise is a big part of it. I won’t do a joke if I don’t think it’s surprising. Low-hanging fruit is anathema to me. It makes my teeth itch.
LaFrance: I ask about surprise because it’s something Mel Brooks told Judd Apatow in an interview Judd just did for The Atlantic. They’d been talking about Blazing Saddles and Judd asked Mel, in effect, whether he set out to be shocking. And Mel says it was never about shocking people, it was just about always getting the biggest laugh—and getting the biggest laugh means surprising people.
Edelman: It’s true. Comedy at its finest is a high-wire act. If you take Blazing Saddles, for example, I can’t believe how off-the-wall it is, but I also can’t believe how clear it is in its intention, right? Like when the railroad bosses are singing “Camptown ladies,” it shows you right away who the joke is on.
LaFrance: That level of moral clarity is signature Mel Brooks.
Edelman: It is. But watching Blazing Saddles as a comedian, you can go, I can’t believe how clear it is. I can’t believe how funny it is. I can’t believe how many different perspectives there are. I can’t believe how off-the-wall it is. I think every show that you watch, you should walk out marveling at it.
LaFrance: That’s a high bar.
Edelman: I went to the New York Theater Archives last week, and I was watching the late playwright and performer Spalding Gray. And he did this really compact movement—and there was something so efficient about the compactness of his movement.
LaFrance: You have to think about that too—how you move across the stage.
Edelman: There are two aspects of stand-up comedy: what you say and how you’re saying it. The content and the aesthetic. In the best shows, they inform each other: The content and the aesthetic overlap.
LaFrance: Who are your comedic heroes?
Edelman: Oh my God. Steve Martin.
LaFrance: I love him so much.
Edelman: When he came to the show, I exploded. I also love Judd Apatow. I love Mel Brooks. I love the writer and director Chris Morris. He made a movie called Four Lions, which is like a Muslim Blazing Saddles. Jesse Armstrong, who wrote Succession. Lucy Prebble. Nathan Englander. And of course Jerry Seinfeld and Billy Crystal. Elaine May. Tom Lehrer—he’s an old comedy brain. And Mike Birbiglia and John Mulaney.
LaFrance: What kind of advice are you getting from these legends who have all come to your show?
Edelman: Do you know I ask everyone who comes for a note? Billy Crystal’s note was huge. He said stop using one of these (Gestures as if holding a handheld mic.); start using one of these (Gestures to his ear as if wearing an earpiece mic.). We did it.
LaFrance: Is it in fact better?
Edelman: So much better. Because you can do free range. You can embody the characters. You can play the characters in a smaller way. It’s really, really not something I liked doing, but he was right. Steve Martin offered a tag. Jerry Seinfeld offered me a thing that bummed him out that came out of the show—he said just don’t address the audience’s reaction to a joke. It was a really good note. Stephen Colbert told me a place in the show to find some more stillness, which was wise.
LaFrance: That’s very Colbert-y.
Edelman: Birbiglia has given about 50 notes on the show, and each one of them is the best note you’ve ever heard. It’s like one of the heads of my Mount Rushmore produced my show and then all of the other heads started coming to see it. So yeah, I ask for notes. And I want notes from people who are not comedy legends who come to see the show. I’m a big, big fan of notes because I don’t take most of them.
LaFrance: Even then, it’s still interesting to hear how people are receiving what you’re doing.
Edelman: You know what’s interesting also is that sometimes a note means that you’re being ambiguous about something that you don’t mean to be ambiguous about. So it can either be changed with one word or where you put something. If I get the same note again and again, it means I’m being ambiguous.
LaFrance: How many times have you performed it now?
Edelman: I’m going to say probably around 300 times. When you perform it every night, it’s very intentional. You are performing it every night with a capacity to change it. You, in your brain, have a chance to—
LaFrance: You can do whatever you want.
Edelman: You can do whatever you want! It’s crazy.
LaFrance: That’s fun.
Edelman: Um.
LaFrance: That’s scary?
Edelman: Scary. Yeah. Fun and scary.
LaFrance: Do you get nervous before going on?
Edelman: I get a certain feeling that’s somewhere between nervousness, excitement, disbelief, gratitude, anger—
LaFrance: Anger?
Edelman: Sadness.
LaFrance: So all the feelings.
Edelman: My feelings are—I don’t think I’ve talked about this—but there’s a moment right before you go onstage where it’s dark. It’s, like, really dark. And you are standing in complete darkness and you’re waiting to go into the brightest light you can stand in. In front of a lot of people. There’s a really profound ritual to that.
LaFrance: Do you feel loneliness in that moment?
Edelman: I always ask to have someone there with me. My stage manager or the assistant stage manager always stands next to me. Sometimes I go, “Can I put my hand on your shoulder?” And I put my hand on their shoulder. So I am reminded that there’s someone else. It’s not nervousness, but it’s also not not nervousness. It’s like, What if everything goes wrong? Or maybe everything is going wrong. But also I get to go onstage and do this.
LaFrance: What about nights when you’re not in the mood to do it? Does that ever happen, where you just have to power through?
Edelman: You owe people a good time and you owe people the best you can. And audiences surprise you and give you energy. And also it’s a conversation. It’s not just me. Sometimes you don’t feel like having a conversation but then the other person sort of bucks you up a little. I’ve gone onstage not wanting to do it, and then a second into it I’m like, This is fucking great. I worked my ass off to get here. I’m going to do a good job. I’m not mailing this shit in. I can’t believe that it’s going on Broadway. I am trying to be grateful. And also I’m very sad. I developed the show with this guy Adam Brace—if not my closest friend, certainly the person who understood me the best. And he died about five weeks ago.
LaFrance: Right, I remember. I’m so sorry.
Edelman: I’m hoping this will make me feel closer to him. Also, there’s no mailing the show in now! Not that I would anyway. But this show is his show, too. He’d be really fucking—pardon my language—he’d be really annoyed if I was just, I’m tired.
LaFrance: I know you keep telling me you’re not famous, but it seems you’ve reached a certain escape velocity.
Edelman: What does that mean?
LaFrance: You’re the kind of person who people see perform and then they say, Oh, he’s going to be very famous. I think you’re going to be very famous. Sorry to be the one to tell you this.
Edelman: I think you’re out of your mind.
LaFrance: I am not out of my mind.
Edelman: I’m serious; I don’t see it happening.
LaFrance: But you must feel the difference lately. You have Steve Martin giving you tags—
Edelman: Proximity to fame and fame are not the same thing.
LaFrance: Of course they’re not. But clearly you understand that there is momentum to the work you’re doing.
Edelman: Being successful and being appreciated are amazing. And I want those things very badly. Fame, you can keep.
LaFrance: Well, this is why I ask. Does it feel weird now?
Edelman: I want my work to be appreciated. I want all the awards. I want all of the people to come to see it. It’s a good show and it’s entertaining and people like it and I’m proud of it. And I have these amazing conversations with people after the show. By the way, if you’re reading this and you’re a thoughtful person, please come to the show and talk about it with me, because I want conversations with as many people as I possibly can. But it’s a little disarming to be here (Gestures around the restaurant we’re in.) and have people walk up to me. Also because of Adam, my director who died, there have been moments these past few weeks where I have been out in public but am not looking to talk. And people are like, “Hey!” I went and saw Parade and it broke me wide open. I didn’t know it was about Leo Frank. I was raised on Leo Frank’s story—this lynching of a Jewish man. And at the intermission, I’ve got my head against the wall, and I’m crying so, so, so, so, so, so hard. Like, cannot breathe and—
LaFrance: Someone pops out like, “Hey!”
Edelman: Genuinely. Someone was like, “Hey, Alex! I saw your show downtown!”
LaFrance: Were you like, “Excuse me, I am sobbing right now”?
Edelman: They saw me crying and they were like, “Oh yeah, it’s super sad.” And I was like, Can you leave me alone? But also I’m not famous. And also, I have lots of complex, thoughtful conversations about really difficult subjects. People who are famous don’t live lives that are heavy on nuance. I’d love to retain the distance. You know, a lot of the stuff that you and I are talking about loving has to do with transgression. I’m not out here to offend anyone, ever. I think if someone offends somebody else, it’s usually a craft failing. I’ve told jokes in the past where I’ve hurt people’s feelings. I have jokes that I won’t do now that aren’t taboo yet, but they will be in five years.
LaFrance: Tell me one.
Edelman: I had a joke—there was a line about someone’s weight. And then I read this book called The Elephant in the Room by this guy Tommy Tomlinson.
LaFrance: Oh, of course, we ran an excerpt of it. He’s a brilliant writer.
Edelman: He’s a gorgeous writer. And halfway through that first page, there’s a line that’s like, Those are the numbers and this is how it feels. And I thought, I will never make a joke about someone’s weight ever again. Or until I can tackle it with empathy or complexity. Because there is funniness in the inherent contradictions between someone being like, “Fat is beautiful!” and “Good for you; you lost all that weight!”
LaFrance: The cultural piece of it.
Edelman: Right, and in that gray area, that’s where there’s comedy. There’s comedy in human frailty. There’s comedy in failure. There’s comedy in success and in the things that success doesn’t buy you.
LaFrance: How did you get into comedy in the first place? You’re from Boston.
Edelman: I started comedy shortly before graduating high school. I would go to open mics. I was a comedy-club boy.
LaFrance: What made you want to go onstage and tell jokes?
Edelman: It looked like fun. The comedians all had fun with each other. They all knew each other. They were co-workers. It was a space where you could be a weirdo. The first show I ever saw was called “Comics Come Home.” It was in a huge arena. Denis Leary hosted it. And everyone looked like they were having such a good time. I was, like, 13. I went because I was a big sports fan and I had worked in sports before I was a comedian. I worked for the Red Sox, the Dodgers, and one sad summer for the Brewers.
LaFrance: So you’re a baseball guy—but are you a big Boston sports fan?
Edelman: I’m a huge Boston sports person. The biggest. But you know, I’m largely agnostic. Sometimes I’ll say that onstage and people will boo in New York. And I’m like, Guys, are we really taking this seriously? Come on. We’re all grown-ups. I think we’re all in a place where we can just be chill.
LaFrance: I’m a Phillies fan.
Edelman: Boooooo!
LaFrance: Can we at least both hate the Mets?
Edelman: I kind of like the Mets because they don’t like the Yankees. But also I like the Yankees because I don’t care anymore. I really don’t care that much anymore, but I’m a huge fan. I love sports.
LaFrance: I used to live right by Fenway on Bay State Road.
Edelman: I know exactly where that is.
LaFrance: It was great because I could sit on my little fire escape and hear the game and it was just the most magical thing.
Edelman: So that’s what I love. I’m a connection junkie. And baseball makes great connection. That hum of the crowd. Oh my God. There’s nothing like a hum of the crowd. I love that.
LaFrance: Okay, so even before you leave high school, you knew you wanted to be a comedian.
Edelman: I didn’t really. It was a hobby. It’s still a hobby. I love it, but I’m not super jaded yet. I’m not jaded at all, actually. It’s my one—the one thing I have going for me is curiosity, I guess. Also, Ira Glass likes to talk about how when you’re young, you have a taste. You have a thing that you like. You’re 18 or 20 and then hopefully grow into it. So I’m still trying to grow into my taste.
LaFrance: Right, that’s the classic bit of Ira Glass wisdom about how you know what quality art is before you have fully developed the skills to make it. Do you have a theory of why so many great comedians are Jewish?
Edelman: I think literacy has a lot to do with it. I think it has to do with comedy being slightly déclassé. Jews have always done well in arenas that are slightly déclassé, or unfashionable. If you read that book An Empire of Their Own, by Neal Gabler, it’s all about the Jews who were pioneers in early Hollywood because they desperately wanted to get on Broadway and they couldn’t.
LaFrance: Well, well, well, now they can!
Edelman: Yes, this is the first Jewish show on Broadway; I’m not sure if people are aware. There has never been another Jewish show on Broadway. There certainly aren’t four at the moment, right now. But I don’t know that a bunch of the comedians that you’re talking about are exactly lighting candles on Friday nights or something. Not to say that comedians who are culturally Jewish don’t feel their Judaism deeply or aren’t deeply invested and engaged with it.
LaFrance: One of the major themes of your show is white nationalism. The show is so funny but the subject matter is intense, obviously. Do you ever feel exhausted by it?
Edelman: I don’t offend easily. I read this really great book called Conflict Is Not Abuse, by Sarah Schulman. But you know what is tough, a little bit? Everyone wants to tell me their anti-Semitism story.
LaFrance: Is that like the people who want to tell you the dream they had last night?
Edelman: The funny thing is, I’ve heard every single one. Once every week, I hear a new one. And, you know, there is still a guy from Boston who calls me “Yarmulke Boy.”
LaFrance: Ugh, really?
Edelman: Yeah.
LaFrance: Who?
Edelman: I won’t say who he is. But he calls me “Yarmulke Boy” and he’s not Jewish and it’s not appropriate. He’ll text me, like, “Hey, YB.” A lot of the comics I grew up admiring in Boston were not good people. I thought I had to be a certain way as a comedian. Turns out I don’t have to be that way. What a relief to find out I didn’t have to be a low-grade bully onstage. My influences were not always sterling. But there are some great ones, too.
LaFrance: That’s very much the Boston comedy scene, especially in that era.
Edelman: I think one of the things about the show that people appreciate is that it eschews easy things, and one of the things it eschews is victimhood. I don’t feel like a victim all of the time. When the Kanye West thing happened, people were like, “I’m so sorry.” And I’m like, “About what? He’s an idiot. He’s such a lackluster anti-Semite.”
LaFrance: Okay, but anti-Semitism has gotten really bad—it’s gotten worse—so I get the impulse for someone to want to say sorry.
Edelman: Oh it’s awful. And I want people to take anti-Semitism seriously. But you know what? Judaism is a tapestry of grief. And it is too complex to be reduced to this prepackaged notion of a turn on the victim wheel for a couple of days. Does that make sense?
LaFrance: It does. Kanye is one tiny piece of this much bigger problem.
Edelman: This much bigger problem we should all be talking about. Which isn’t to say I’m dying to work with Kanye West. In fact, I don’t really want to hang out with him. But also I am curious to sit down with someone like that to ask, “What is going on with you? And also, if you have these notions, I’m happy to talk to you about how you feel.”
LaFrance: That’s very generous.
Edelman: Well, it’s not, though. I don’t think acknowledging someone’s existence is the same thing as cosigning them completely.
LaFrance: Of course not. But a desire to talk to someone is different than just saying, “This person’s an idiot and I’m not going to engage with this at all.”
Edelman: I didn’t engage with the Kanye thing. I didn’t tweet about the Kanye thing. Someone said to me, “You haven’t said anything about Kanye.” I was like, “Do you not know where I would stand on that?” You don’t need to be a mind reader to figure out how Alex Edelman is going to feel about Kanye West.
LaFrance: I’ve talked to so many comics about comedy in this cultural moment—this question of what you can say, whether you can really tell jokes anymore.
Edelman: You can, you absolutely can. I do think that there are a bunch of people who can be too sensitive about jokes. I wrote something for a TV program, and they said, “We can’t put this on. Our audience will be offended.”
LaFrance: What was the joke?
Edelman: It was about how there’s one holiday that’s so dominant in the winter that all the other religions’ holidays struggle to be seen and that holiday, of course … is Hanukkah. And right now it’s really hard because you go to the supermarket and Hanukkah’s everywhere. And there’s also another holiday called Christmas and Christmas is this holiday that celebrates the birth of Santa Claus. It was all very heavy on irony. And they were like, “Our audience will think you’re bashing Christmas.” And I was like, “No.” So I do think there is some of that—irony that is taken at face value. But I also think that tension and comedy are natural partners. And also, by the way, things that are acceptable now won’t be acceptable in a couple years.
LaFrance: But comedy is not supposed to age well. It’s supposed to be ephemeral.
Edelman: A big part of working on this show and keeping it alive is pruning things out of it that seemed okay in 2021 but now seem a little staid, or that seem relevant now—like a clause that acknowledges the present moment that we’re living in. I think of the show, truly, as a story that I’m telling to a group of people. I mean this, Adrienne, it’s a story. It’d be the same thing as if 20 people were sitting around this table with us and Mike Birbiglia said, “Alex, tell us your story.” If I had a reference to something from 2018 in there, everybody would be looking around like, What the fuck is going on?
LaFrance: They’d be like, Is he okay?
Edelman: Right, like Jared Kushner is invoked in the show and now I say, “Trump’s Jewish son-in-law,” because now it’s not a given that everyone knows who Jared Kushner is. There were so many jokes cut from the show or added into the show. It’s a living thing. It is a story I am trying to tell. Not to be pretentious about it.
LaFrance: Do you think that comedy is the highest form of truth?
Edelman: No. Obviously not. Obviously not.
LaFrance: Fine, fine, but—
Edelman: It can make a point in an oblique way that addresses a fact that you can’t make in a straightforward way.
LaFrance: You’re a real theorist. What I mean is—as with novels or great works of visual art, isn’t there truth you can access from great comedy that is otherwise inaccessible?
Edelman: Yeah, but the fact that you asked that question with a bit of an eye roll does speak to the fact that comedy is a really effective Trojan horse for truth, or a great way to hold two contradictory truths at the same time.
LaFrance: A way of acknowledging complexity in the world.
Edelman: But there’s no such thing as a form of truth telling. It’s like saying, “Is an oven the most effective way of communicating heat?”
LaFrance: Come on, an oven’s pretty good at communicating heat.
Edelman: Wait until you meet open flame. Open flame kicks oven’s ass.
LaFrance: Are you an extreme extrovert?
Edelman: Noooo. Are you kidding?
LaFrance: No, I’m not kidding! Because you said you wanted to be out talking to people.
Edelman: I’m an extrovert who needs to recharge an introvert battery a lot. And I like safe spaces. And by safe spaces I mean conversations with people who I can say anything to. Where I can say “I’m worried” or “What do you think about this?” I think there’s a real thing where if I have questions about a world I don’t know about, or a perspective I don’t understand, I have lots of friends where I can go, “Hey, can I get your perspective on this thing I don’t understand?”
LaFrance: That’s a very journalistic posture, you know.
Edelman: I really love intense conversation.
LaFrance: Why do you think you’re funny—what made you funny?
Edelman: I think there’s something about wanting to make points in interesting ways.
LaFrance: So wanting to be effective at getting your point across?
Edelman: I don’t know that I crave funniness, really. I crave originality. I crave surprise.
LaFrance: Getting a reaction out of people.
Edelman: The right reaction. Also, I crave connection, and there’s nothing that connects people like funny.
LaFrance: Do you have funny family members?
Edelman: Yes, my grandfather was funny. My grandfather on my father’s side was the funniest. Also my grandmother. My parents are both funny in different ways. My mother will be like, “This is the funniest thing,” and you’ll be like, “It’s a coincidence is what you mean.”
LaFrance: Why do you think so many comedians are emotionally tortured?
Edelman: Everyone’s tortured.
LaFrance: Everyone?
Edelman: Show me a nontortured person; we’re not going to get along. But I’m not tortured! I have shpilkes.
LaFrance: I don’t know what that is.
Edelman: I have anxiety but not, like, clinical anxiety. I just want things to go well. This is a real cliché, but if you’re paying attention, and your job is to be attuned to things, it’s kind of hard not to wrestle with the complexities of that.
LaFrance: Tell me about the art you consume—books, movies, TV.
Edelman: I love Simon Rich. I love Succession and anything else that Jesse Armstrong has done.
LaFrance: Didn’t Adam McKay also produce Succession?
Edelman: He did. I love Adam McKay–style comedy.
LaFrance: I was just telling a friend of mine about a sketch he wrote for SNL—this must have been 20 years ago—called Neil Armstrong: The Ohio Years. The whole premise of it was Neil Armstrong, later in life, and how he never got over how awesome it was to have gone to the moon. And he’s going about his daily life but you hear his internal monologue constantly going, Moon!
Edelman: Do you know my Neil Armstrong joke?
LaFrance: Tell me.
Edelman: I did it on Conan a couple years ago. It’s about meeting Neil Armstrong—and this is true—at the USS Intrepid. I asked him to sign an autograph and he wouldn’t sign an autograph for me. So I start yelling at him. And I said, “Neil Armstrong took a step away from me, and it was a small step for Neil Armstrong.” The joke is also about how no one knows who Michael Collins is. Neil Armstrong: one of the most famous men in American history. Michael Collins, third guy on the mission: not even the most famous Michael Collins! There’s a movie called Michael Collins. It’s about a different guy. I love doing that joke. And I love Adam McKay. I love funny. I love funny but good. I’m not into stuff that isn’t propulsive. I said to Jason Robert Brown, the composer who wrote the music and lyrics for Parade, that Parade is like Schindler’s List if Schindler’s List slapped.
LaFrance: This is true about your own writing—it’s very tightly wound.
Edelman: It should be riveting. Fun has become a dirty word. My shows are fun. It doesn’t mean they’re light. It doesn’t mean they’re not thoughtful or thought-provoking. They need to be fun. Every drama should be fun. Every comedy should be fun. I’m not sitting through anything ever again unless it pulls me in. Ever! I’m done.
When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.