Exclusive: Claybourne Elder Is Ready to Share Stories He’s ‘Avoided’ for Years — and Yes, He’s Nervous
The actor gets candid on his Mormon upbringing and exclusively tells BroadwayWorld there is power in setting boundaries and saying ‘no.’
Claybourne Elder may seem like an open book on Instagram — he talks about life as a dad, takes followers behind the scenes at The Gilded Age and even isn’t afraid to show some skin. But there’s more to tell, he says… and the time is now.
When it comes to his upcoming 54 Below show, Can I Tell You Something?, Elder exclusively tells BroadwayWorld, “I can share that it’s not being livestreamed because I don’t want anyone outside the room to hear the stories!”
The concerts, held September 8 and 9, will be “deeply personal,” he says, “but also hilarious.”
While the Little Shop of Horrors star has previously opened up about growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and even revealed he was kicked out of the Mormon-run Brigham Young University (BYU), there’s plenty to unpack — and by doing so, he says, “we sort of dispel the shame.”
A lot has changed since Elder came to New York to pursue musical theater. He racked up a handful of Broadway and Off-Broadway credits — earning a Drama Desk nomination for his performance in One Arm — got married to director Eric Rosen in 2012 and welcomed son Claybourne “Bo” Philip Rosen-Elder in 2017.
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As Elder gets older, he’s constantly learning more about himself as he strives to instill good morals and values in his son, now 9.
“I try to give him a broad worldview, but [what I teach him is] really actually pretty simple, which is the same thing my mom told me when I came out,” Elder explains. “She just said, ‘I just want you to be a good person.’”
Looking back on the “embarrassing” moments in his life — or the ones that hold shame — makes Elder “totally” nervous, he admits. However, “I think that’s sort of the point. As I’m getting older, I think about what we leave behind a lot more.”
It’s not like he’d necessarily change anything, though. “The experiences you go through are the things you need to go through so that you can become the person you are now,” he says. “And if you are a person that you love right now — which sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not — I wouldn’t want to tell myself not to go through those things. I would just want to tell myself that things are going to be hard, but that you can get through them.”
Elder is also learning that there is power in setting boundaries. On a recent podcast episode, the actor revealed he was asked to come into work at Broadway’s Company on a night he’d taken off to be with his son or else the show would have to be canceled due to the lack of understudies.
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The actor’s son was “crushed,” he said on the podcast, and since then, he’s learned to say no to things and shake the “overachiever” mindset he came to New York with all those years ago.
“It was detrimental to my mental health for a long time,” Elder tells BroadwayWorld. “Because you’re constantly saying yes to everything, then nothing is good enough. Also, you’re saying yes to so many things that when something really great comes along, you’re just waiting for the [next] best thing to come along rather than loving the thing you’re doing.”
These days, “I’ve started keeping a list of things that I say no to at my therapist's request,” reveals the actor and director, whose production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee recently opened at Massachusetts’ Cape Playhouse. (“It is an embarrassment of riches as far as cast goes,” Elder, who earned a degree in dramaturgy and directing from the University of Utah, says of the company that includes Julia Murney, Alex Wyse and more.)
Elder says he gets “a massive amount of strength” when he looks at that list of projects he’s turned down, adding that he’s making space for creative and personal endeavors that really matter. “I know that sounds kind of hokey, but it’s really true,” he explains. “When I’m feeling like, ‘Nobody’s asking me to do anything,’ I can look at that list, and I can say, ‘This didn’t work out because my son’s chorus concert is that night, and I’m just not going to miss that.’”
With Elder’s upcoming 54 Below show, he hopes “this is a way of letting people in even more into my life.”
“Into who I really am,” he notes. “And maybe not the version you see on Instagram.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Claybourne Elder
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