To close out the year I’m posting videos from the top interviews from 2025. These were a mix of my personal favorites, some of your favorites and a few that may have slipped under the radar. I’m posting these chronologically. My second video is with Broadway star Claybourne Elder.
Fans of The Gilded Age know that Claybourne Elder does not limit himself to musicals. He also has a very popular Instagram account which beautifully documents, amongst other things, his relationship with his son, Bo.
When we spoke in February of this year, Elder was bringing his show If the Stars Were Mine to Feinstein’s at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco and the Samueli Theatre at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts.
He described his show as a “hilarious, heartfelt and surprisingly filthy evening.” In our conversation, we discussed exactly how filthy the evening is, his experiences of working with Stephen Sondheim (he was in the most recent revival of Company), his Instagram videos with his then seven-year-old son and the reason he remains an “irrationally optimistic person.”
Elder began his stage career by appearing in Broadway Sacramento’s 2008 production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. He made the leap to New York when he landed the role of Hollis in Sondheim’s Road Show at the Public Theater. I saw him in the very last performance of that production on December 28, 2008.
To read the print version of this story and see him perform four songs, please go HERE.
Photo: Claybourne Elder in the Cultural Attaché Interview