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.
