Alex Edelman discussed releasing his HBO-Max comedy special, Alex Edelman: Just for Us, during the worst levels of antisemitism in decades. His comments were made during HBO and Max’s Stand Up for Comedy week of press conferences in mid-October. Mandy Moore moderated the press conference in question.
The special–taped August 15-16, 2023 at The Hudson Theatre–previously won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special. After performing the show in 2018-2020, Edelman resumed his tour in 2023-2024. The last performances in Los Angeles were just before its release on HBO and Max.
Edelman’s show draws from his experiences with online antisemitic threats. After receiving threats, what he decided to do was covertly attend a meeting of white nationalists in Queens. In doing so, he comes face-to-face with the very people threatening him. What happened next would form the basis for the 90-minute show. The show, in my opinion, is unapologetically Jewish and its Emmy win was very deserved. It was only a few months before his show ended in which antisemitism started skyrocketing to levels not seen since the Holocaust.
Alex Edelman: Just for Us is available to stream on Max.
Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
How did it feel to release the special at a time when anti-Jewish hate has been the worst that it’s been in decades?
Alex Edelman: Well. It felt good having something to talk with. I’ve written a couple of solo shows and some are conversant with the moment that they’re in and some are not. This one being sort of about the thing that is on my mind and not being entirely about the current moment of what it means to be Jewish, but the sort of eternal question of what it means to be Jewish, was really helpful and grounding and tethering. It was really nice to hear from other people who shared that experience.
So right after October 7th, when it all sort of started in Gaza. Which has been—I’m not being controversial by saying, it’s just the whole thing’s been horrible to watch. And every day has brought new horror. I was wondering, like, I should even be doing the show. A couple of people sent me some pretty unsavory messages.
I called my producer, Jenny Gersten, and I said, should I do the show? She was like, Let me think about it. And then she called me the next day. She’s like, You have to do the show. It’ll be like, a nice escape. I went to the back of the theater before the show started and I looked at the audience. I never stand in the back of the theater, but I was going to check on a sound thing and I just saw everybody watching a war on their phone. I was like, you know what? For an hour and a half, people don’t have to watch a war.
But you know what? I think that asks a broader question, though, about art. Which we don’t maybe have all the time in the world to get into, but the broader question is, how conversant with the exact moment should art be? Should it be evergreen and the moment refracts through it, or should it be a direct conversation? And it’s not prismatic? Does that make sense? Should art be evergreen or should it be immediately responsive to topicality?
So obviously, the special was going to be broadcast before everything started happening in the Middle East with antisemitism in the United States, all that stuff. But I found it’s been a useful refractory as opposed to a direct thing. It’d be nice to create something that’s in direct conversation. Some of my favorite pieces of content, like favorite pieces of art, like Bo Burnham’s Inside is in direct conversation about the pandemic. I think you have to, as an artist, always weigh that. If you make a piece of work, how do you balance timelessness with timeliness? And so, thank G-d it feels like Just For Us has been able to do both. But I wonder what my next piece will be like.