The Canceled Broadway Actor Bringing Thomas Sowell To The Stage w/Clifton Duncan
Clifton Duncan, a blacklisted Broadway actor, details his exclusion from New York casting after refusing the COVID vaccine and criticizing pandemic hysteria. Facing industry gatekeepers who claimed his presence would "cause tension," he bypassed traditional channels to crowdfund a one-man show on Thomas Sowell, raising fifteen times its Indiegogo goal. Duncan argues that conservative pragmatism fails to support artists like him, creating infrastructure gaps for non-woke creators while left-wing romanticism dominates cultural funding. Ultimately, his journey highlights how systemic censorship forces talented individuals to build independent audiences rather than relying on established Hollywood pathways. [Automatically generated summary]
Part of your job as an actor is trying to find work.
And when you get to a good point in your career, you literally have casting people trying to get you into shows because they believe in you.
And I had one of these people sit me down and say, why aren't you a star yet?
How can we change that and make that happen?
But now I'm told that if I'm in a room, it will quote unquote cause tension.
That's the word they use now because they can't quite say directly that I've been blacklisted.
Hey, everybody, it's Andrew Claver with this week's interview with Clifton Duncan.
We had Clifton Duncan on a while back.
It seems like a long time now.
He is a tremendously talented, classically trained actor and singer.
He was on his way to a real Broadway career.
And I wish I had clips that I can play, but you can see some of them online.
The guy has a genuine talent.
When he was hit by the cancel train, it was about his not wanting to put something into his body that he didn't want, namely the vaccine, the COVID vaccine, which we now know is not very good for young men.
He bravely stood up for it.
But, you know, something that is very hard to get, which is a showbiz career, especially a stage career, was stolen from him.
And he is now doing things that you have to do, which is to build your own career, to break the stranglehold that we have.
He's a really brave guy.
He is now building a following outside the system.
His newest project, which I think is a great idea, is a crowdfunded one-man show inspired by the life and work of Dr. Thomas Sowell.
I can't think of anything better.
Clifton, it's been a long time since I've seen you.
How are you doing?
Mr. Claven, wonderful to see you again.
I didn't quite catch that compound you mentioned in your Andry.
Do you mind running that by me?
No, I can't pronounce it anymore.
If the words aren't actually in front of me, that's how I can read it.
What is it?
Glutathione?
I don't know.
But it's great.
It's great for you.
Lipothion disease, xenophobia.
I don't know.
I don't know what it was.
I have no clue.
That's why you get paid the big bucks.
That's why I get the big buck.
So tell the people what happened to you.
Tell the people what happened, where you were in your career and what happened.
Well, you know, I was in the position where I was, you know, one hit away.
So, you know, I'm just in my conception of myself oftentimes, you know, I'm a shy military brat who found himself working with Tony Award-winning actors.
And then in 2020, everything shut down.
And it's funny because at the beginning of the process, I was very much on the Covidian train.
But then around April or so of 2020, I really began to say, well, what's going on here?
These things don't really make sense.
In some ways, I was thinking like an economist and saying, you know, what are the costs and benefits?
What are the trade-offs that we're allowing to have happen?
What are the precedents that are being set by having all of these rules imposed upon us?
And on top of that, 2020, the middle of that year was also the year where we had the George Floyd riots.
And I began to see these sweeping changes and hysteria upon hysteria upon hysteria, right?
Because first there was Trump and then there was the virus.
And then there was what some call the virus of racism, which spread like wildfire throughout the nation.
And I don't know why, but I just could not stand by.
And I just couldn't be silent for some reason.
And there are nights where I kick myself and say, why couldn't I just shut up?
And, you know, I was on track to live a really good life and to do what I've been doing for 20 years of my life.
And if I could spend the next 15 or 20 years doing Shakespeare and musicals, that's what I'd be doing.
But for whatever reason, I decided to open my big fat mouth.
And I suffered the consequences of that.
Yeah, I know the feeling.
And the only thing that has kept me from kicking myself any harder is the look in the people's eyes who don't speak up.
That dead look that they've been, that their motivation and their self-will has been taken away from them.
I admire what you do, but I know what you lost.
I know what you lost.
So let me ask you, has that hysteria disappeared?
I mean, is that something could you return now to the stage and start again?
Or is that not a thing?
You know, I'm just, I'm not sure now.
You know, a few, I don't know how long ago it was, maybe it was last year, perhaps two years ago, I had a very good friend, a very fancy friend who's musical theater royalty, Tony Award-winning lyricist and composer, who called me about eight o'clock at night.
And he said, you know, it was a long phone call, but he said, basically, you're on a blacklist of the, you know, of the top, at the top casting agency in the one, in the industry, but especially in New York.
And this is an agency where I had a good relationship.
And, you know, as I'm sure you know, Clavin, part of your job as an actor is trying to find work.
And when you get to a good point in your career, you literally have casting people trying to get you into shows because they believe in you.
And, you know, I had one of these people sit me down and say, why aren't you a star yet?
How can we change that and make that happen?
And so, but now I'm told that if I'm in a room, it will quote unquote cause tension.
That's the word they use now because they can't quite say directly that I've been blacklisted.
But, you know, that's just sort of how it goes the territory.
And, you know, I've tried to get a new agent to no avail.
Part of that is because the industry has contracted so much, partly because of their own decisions, which I began to speak out about back in 2020 and 2021.
But also, you know, it's just, from what I've learned, my name has just become one of those things where, you know, we don't talk about this person anymore.
And it's really a shame.
You know, you mentioned people who don't speak up.
I know some of these people.
Some of them are very well-established actors.
And these people are liberals, you know.
And even they, I call them Marian liberals after our friend Bill.
Even they are afraid to say anything now because the atmosphere has become so toxic and so ridiculous that you can't, they feel unable to speak their minds freely.
So that gives you a sense of what's going on.
And my friends on the inside that are still on the inside report just as much.
You know, it's just, it's the same sort of thing and it's trumped this and it's trumped that.
And, you know, I don't know how that changes anytime soon because, you know, we might get into this later.
But, you know, it really is, it goes deeper than politics for these people.
It's really grafted onto their conception of who they are.
And so you can't, you know, I got really frustrated in the wake of the 2024 election where I saw all these influencers saying, oh, ding dong, the woke is dead.
Like, no, you don't understand what's going on here.
It's not about politics.
It's not about policy.
It's about something more cosmic than that.
So, you know, it's just, it's a shame, but it is what it is.
You know, there is a syndrome that I've heard about that I believe in.
I've seen it in action, actually, that, you know, people in a lynch mob actually feel closer together after they've done it.
They actually feel bonded together.
And when you blacklist people, and I've been blacklisted and I've been thrown out of my poker game and thrown out of all, you know, the people feel really good about themselves afterwards.
I think it is a form of denial, basically.
And of course they don't want you in the room because you're the clue that you're the accusatory fact.
You're the thing that says, you know, no, you did a bad thing to a perfectly good person who has all the talent in the world.
It's just, you're absolutely right.
It's more cosmic than they talk about.
So, your response was the response, I think, which was you started to build your own world.
You started a podcast and then you started this project to do a one-man show about Thomas Soule, which I think is a great idea.
I mean, if you can do it, how is that?
How is that proceeded?
Well, you know, first off, you know, I call myself an accidental influencer.
You know, I never set out to be tweeting and podcasting.
And, you know, I ended up making connections with people and getting on some big shows.
And, you know, I happen to be someone who is capable of snark as well as condensing thoughts into tiny spaces, which is a really good quality to have on a platform like X/slash Twitter.
And so I just found myself with a large following.
And then eventually I started a podcast.
And I've pulled it now because I want to move in a new direction.
But that wasn't really the goal before.
But what it did allow me was to build up enough relationships and a big enough profile where I had this idea where, which really I've had on my mind for years, where I've seen other solo shows about Paul Robeson and it went out about, I didn't seen it, I've read it, but about Thurgood Marshall or about Louis Armstrong, the jazz trumpeter.
And I just, a flash, again, this was years ago, I said, well, what if someone did a one-person show about Thomas Soule?
And so I had the libertarian podcaster Tom Woods help me figure out how to make an ad campaign.
And I went to Indiegogo and we ended up raising 15 times the amount of money we asked for.
So what it's allowed me to do is to, it's afforded me the time to just really sink in and soak up his work.
And it took a long time because, I mean, the man has written 45, maybe 46 books at this point.
He is still writing, by the way, at the age of 96 years old.
And it took a long time to figure out, you know, how do you dramatize this material?
How do you synthesize this person's work?
And so finally, this year, the beginning of this year, late last year, is when I began to sit down and really say, okay, I think I've got a strong idea.
So right now I'm in the process of writing.
Finally, the research phase is over.
And the goal right now is just production, production, production.
We need to get it into production and on its feet.
And ultimately, the goal is to have a nicely filmed production of it to upload online.
But right now, it's just a matter of getting the script done.
It's going to be a bad first draft.
I know that.
If anyone wants to follow along, they can go to becoming soul.substack.com where I'm documenting my progress and process in creating it.
But right now, it's just a matter of, you know, I have so much more respect for writers now.
Not that I didn't have it before, but the process of doing it and about a true person is also difficult.
So it's interesting.
But right now, the goal is to get on its feet and to get it working and to find venues and producers who will stage the stage to play.
So, I mean, it is a massive task.
I mean, it's not just being a writer.
I mean, you have to absorb the guy to bring him to life.
And he's, you know, he's not, you know, he's incredibly prolific.
And his ideas, I mean, the thing about Seoul that's so, I don't know, dazzling is that his ideas are so straightforward and simple.
But when you read them, it's like a light goes on in your brain.
It's like you never thought of it before.
He's so direct in what he says and so obviously right about so much of what he says.
It's an amazing person.
Have you met him?
Have you ever met him?
No, no, I came, I've come close.
You know, he's notoriously elusive.
He's a curmudgeon.
And he really, really guards very closely.
I mean, I know people who know him.
i've reached out to his publicist i've reached out to uh peter robinson who follows me on twitter i you know and he hosts the uncommon knowledge series um it's funny you know he He was actually, I emailed his research assistant, never heard anything back.
He's someone who, you know, he is very, very, very protective about who he lets into his inner circle.
As a matter of fact, I was at Hoover a few months ago.
There was a legacy celebration for, you know, in his honor, you know, in his neck of the woods.
He didn't show up for that.
So, you know, people speculated that it might be health reasons, but, you know, but others, you know, I spoke to Shelby Steele's son, the great black conservative intellectual Shelby Steele.
And Eli told me that, you know, he's probably just working.
And that tracks to me.
So, you know, I got to meet Clarence Thomas.
I did not get to meet Thomas Soule, in whose name the event was an honor.
But, you know, he has to know about what's happening.
I mean, I've reached out to several people and I never expected to meet him.
You know, part of me also says, you know, well, he's earned his peace.
You know, I don't know if he needs some sort of gnat buzzing in his ear, but and he's sort of pathologically modest in some sense as well.
I want to go back to one thing you said about his ideas.
You know, one of the things that I've learned in devouring his work, and it's really given me a much greater respect for him because this is a man who has been developing his mind since he was 11 years old.
He tested for an above 120 IQ in the sixth grade.
He discovered the library at age 10 and books became his companions because he was essentially an only child.
And this is someone who is, he has been reading and researching and thinking and sharing and developing ideas for 85 years.
And when you read his work, especially, I think a lot of my script right now, the story I'm crafting is based around his work on visions and the evolution of ideas over the span of centuries.
It's just so, the depth and breadth and scope of his knowledge is just really, really profound.
And the fact that he's able to organize it in a way that is so A, readable, but B, logical.
He places a huge premium on systematic, rational, scientific reasoning.
And you can see that all throughout his work.
It's very, very thrilling to read and to be and to just absorb as a person.
It's just fascinating.
And I have so much respect for him after digging into his work in that way.
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Rational Reasoning In Arts Culture00:11:57
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Yeah, I think he's America's greatest intellectual.
I don't think there's anybody who's, I can't think of anybody offhand who could compete with him.
It's just an amazing body of work.
And I've never, I mean, I've read a fairly large handful of his books.
And I would have to say, I've never read one of them where I didn't, it didn't actually change the way I think.
So it's a very exciting project, I think.
Now, you have a substack.
Tell people where to find your substack.
So my substack is called the State of the Arts.
It's at cliftonduncan.substack.com.
I call it a, my log line for that is that it's writing that lives at the nexus of art, entertainment, culture, and society.
And it's where I try to dissect cultural issues.
And I use the term culture, not as many people use it, but specifically in terms of the intellectual and creative output of a society.
And so, you know, I'm a cultural commentator, but I also try to tie it into the broader civilization, if you will.
Now, one of the things I've noticed in the, it's really well written, by the way.
It's really a pleasure to read.
Thank you.
But you seem to be losing your patience with a certain strain on the right.
And this happens to everybody who cares about the culture and is on the right.
Ultimately, it happens.
You seem to be losing your patience with the right as culture creators and culture acceptors, as people who encourage the culture.
Is that a fair reading?
Am I right about that?
Yeah, well, you know, David Mammet famously wrote an essay called Why I'm No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal.
And I think where I stand now is like, you know, why I am not a brain-dead right-winger or whatever.
I mean, even the term right-wing to me is rife with problems because what does right-wing even mean?
You know, it's a constellation of ideologies, really.
But, you know, I've been frustrated because right now, pop culture and culture in general is at an inflection point.
And there's an opportunity here, which I don't think we've ever really had before.
And we see the impact of, for instance, new media and alternative media and having broken the monopoly over discourse that people of the more left-wing persuasion have had for almost 60 years, really.
And yet over and over again, I see people on the right or among conservatives who constantly whine and complain about how the arts are all woke and how entertainment is all woke.
But, you know, you never see them profiling or platforming any artists.
You never see them, you know, there's always exceptions here and there, but you never see them patronizing the arts.
And it's very frustrating because I know, and I'm sure you know as well, there are plenty, plenty of just extraordinarily gifted artists who are hardworking.
They're good people.
I mean, one of them, my friend James Zimmerman, for instance, who, you know, he went viral recently because he's suing the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for trying to blackball him because of his politics.
There are people that are of such high caliber, but they really have nowhere else to go.
Their choices are to be themselves truly, which has an impact on your art, a positive impact on your art, to be themselves or to silence themselves and always live, quote unquote, in the closet because there's no viable alternatives.
And so after the Super Bowl this year, 2026, I began to see people, some of them are your coworkers, who are saying, you know, maybe, maybe we should look into this whole culture thing.
And it's like, yes, yes, duh.
Because you can't keep calling yourselves culture warriors while creating no culture.
I say all the time, there's plenty of content creators.
We need more culture creators.
And if you do not invest either time or energy or resources, A, into respecting the arts as a trade and as something as a noble profession, but B, as if you don't invest in them as a crucial element of a thriving and healthy society, then do not complain when the elements of your society and civilization are ceded to people who don't share your values and who frankly hate you.
And I've just, I've grown so sick and tired of all of this.
And you can tell my ire is raised.
Now, I'm very fortunate that people supported my project, obviously.
I can't deny that.
My friend I was having lunch with, my line producer for the soul play, told me that the Penn Dragon cycle is an extraordinary piece of dramatic art.
But there really is an issue with people saying, oh, man, Hollywood is terrible and publishing, the publishing industry is bad and so much pop music is empty, but there are no viable alternatives to that.
You're not offering people anything.
And there's such a huge mass market opportunity right now for people who've felt pushed away from the art sectors for so long.
There's talent there and there's a yearning, I feel, among people, among Americans for something new and refreshing and life-affirming, but it's just not coming for the most part from the people who are complaining the loudest about it.
So when I started out doing this, which is now like 25 years ago, I started talking about this, almost all of the words you just spoke.
People would ask me, and they still ask me, is there something about conservatism that is antithetical to art?
And to be honest with you, I don't know the answer to that.
I think many of our best artists are conservatives.
I know Cormac McCarthy was a secret conservative.
I think one of the Cohn brothers is probably a secret conservative.
I'm not sure about that, but I think so watching his work.
And I don't know the left so effectively took over the arts that we have been squeezed out.
We've been blacklisted.
We've been blackballed to people who might speak or afraid to speak.
We have no infrastructure of intelligent reviews.
There's no prizes.
I've been talking about this for 25 years.
Why are there no prizes for writers who are not woke, you know what?
Or actors and all those things.
So we haven't developed a culture of conservative culture lovers.
But is there something inherent in conservatism that is anti-culture?
In some ways, yes, and in some ways, no.
You know, I thought about this as well.
One answer that I came to is that art is sacred to the left or to the left-wing vision, to a liberal vision in a way that is not to the right.
And it's not because of a lack of sophistication or a lack of intelligence.
For me, it's simply a different value structure or a different system of values.
The way that I put it is that, you know, you could be a multi-platinum singer.
You sold 10 gazillion albums or whatever.
I mean, it's more than platinum, but you get what I'm saying.
And among conservatives, you will not be as respected as, say, a farmer who feeds 100,000 people or a happily married father whose family is healthy and well provided for.
So it's just, it's a different set of values.
Also, when you're talking about conservatism, naturally, you know, you're going to bend toward what is stable.
Careers in the arts are not stable.
You want to veer toward what is normal.
Artists are not normal people.
You know, what the value that conservatives, I think, bring to society as a whole is that stability.
It is that practicality and that pragmatism that says, you know, grow up and get a quote unquote real job.
You know, the fence is broken.
It needs mending.
These kinds of things.
We need borders.
We need a strong economy.
These things are valuable in and of themselves.
But I think what the left has is their inherent romanticism.
And I sort of picture them as the children running around the room while the conservatives are telling them not to break things.
But the thing about children is they're wildly inventive and imaginative and they're open emotionally and they're always just inventing new stuff.
And, you know, and I sort of push back on this idea about another reason I push back on this idea about conservatism and a sort of, I don't know, ineptitude with the arts is, you know, I think back to early in the 20th century where you had, you know, black Americans who, you know, were working in menial jobs and were very spiritual and more conservative people back then, but they still gave us jazz, which changed the entire sort of, you know,
it changed Broadway.
It changed American popular music.
You know, I'm reading, or I have a book right now I want to read called Highbrow and Lowbrow, which examines cowboys and frontiersmen and how they were very well versed in Shakespeare and they were very passionate about it.
So it's not, again, are we more or less educated than the cowboys and prostitutes of centuries ago?
So I don't know what it is now that the value system has changed.
It's just that to the more conservative vision or what Seoul might call the more constrained vision, it's just the arts are not seen as a valuable investment.
And, you know, you've been talking about it.
Camille Potley has been talking about it.
I've spoken to people like Heather McDonald and Douglas Murray about it.
They all see the same thing is that, you know, GDP is great.
National security is fantastic.
We all love public safety and great schools.
But underneath all of that, we still need, in my opinion, something that's intangible.
And that is the sublimity and the sense of transcendence that a great piece of art can bring to life, to say nothing of, you know, what your children are watching, listening to, what they're reading, and how it can open you emotionally and help you increase your intellect.
I mean, there's all kinds of intangible benefits to a great arts culture, to say nothing of how you influence your society.
And people in that society vote.
And again, you have people on the more left side of things who they value arts in a different way, and they don't care if they don't make money with their investment.
They recognize, A, the social utility of the arts, and B, they just, they find value in it.
And, you know, again, you can win prestige, as you were saying, in prizes and prestige and prosperity as an artist on the left.
And that just, again, there's no viable pathway for that on the other side of the spectrum, which is unfortunate.
It really is not.
Expressing Yourself Beyond Restaurants00:05:06
I want to end with this.
I mean, there's a personal question.
And if you don't want to answer it, you can just say so.
You're a terrific singer.
You're a really good actor.
You're obviously very well spoken.
What does it mean to you?
See, writers can keep writing.
They threw me out of Hollywood.
I just kept writing.
Now my books are doing well and it's great and all this.
So I was never put in a position where I couldn't do the thing that I was born to do.
I could always do it.
Actors, when you take your stage away, you take your audience away.
It's very hard to do that.
What has this experience been like?
And how do you endure it?
Well, I mean, it certainly hasn't been fun.
You know, it's funny when I joke that most actors, they work at restaurants and, you know, and then they make it.
But I have made it.
And then I was working in restaurants.
And, you know, I come up to these tables, you know, night after night and have people just saying like, hey, Mac, you know what, man?
You should be an actor, man.
You ever thought about being an actor?
You know what you should do is reach out to casting.
I'm like, dude, I've been on Broadway.
Like, I just, I just, I don't know, you know, what, what, what to tell you.
It's difficult, especially, I mean, I'm at midlife as well.
So when you are at a point where you're, where you've reached a point, you're saying, okay, finally, I'm becoming somebody all these years of struggle and sacrifice.
And now I'm finally growing into who I'm meant to be.
And then to have those roads, you know, blocked is it's very, very trying, especially at this time in my life.
So in my heart of hearts, you know, I don't want to paint myself as a as a victim.
I've done that for quite some time.
And so part of getting back on the horse is, of course, this soul project, but also, you know, reviving my YouTube channel and building, as I talked about, content creators, but building my own audience.
And again, going directly to them and saying, this is what I have to do.
Because frankly, I mean, I'll be damned if I'm going to allow a bunch of zealots to stop me.
There's a reason that it took this worldwide event to stop my rise.
And, you know, it's frustrating because I see people all the time, people that I went to school with, who I've done shows with, winning Emmys and Oscars.
And I'm like, there's no reason I shouldn't be right alongside those people.
But it is what it is.
I made my choices.
That's fine.
I'll just have to find another way to express myself.
And it seems that that's what I'm doing now, even if I don't quite see what the future will hold for me.
Yeah, it's an amazing, I mean, I can't express to people, you know, people do their jobs and they may like their jobs and love their jobs, but jobs like ours are part of the fabric of our skin.
It's like, you know, part of our blood stream.
And it's very hard to explain to people what these clowns are taking away when they take things away for no reason.
I mean, it's not like you shot somebody.
It's like it's just an amazing.
And in fact, that would probably help your career.
There are people with criminal records right now who are being allowed back into the fold.
There are predators and all kinds of things.
But because you don't like what I've tweeted, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an amazing thing.
But look, I am somebody who believes that if you do the thing, you will find the place you're meant to be.
I mean, I do not believe you can actually be stopped.
And I think you're an enormous talent.
I think your project is good.
And I hope you perform.
You perform on YouTube, perform in bars, wherever you can perform.
You should perform.
People should get to see you.
And you never know where that'll lead.
Well, we'll see.
I mean, it's not quite the same as shaking hands with Stephen Sondheim and others, but we'll see what happens.
Well, Clifton Duncan, tell people where to find you again so they know.
Sure.
You can find me on Twitter at CliftonA. Duncan.
You can find me on Substack, which is where I'm most active right now at CliftonDuncan.substack.com.
I'm going to revive my YouTube channel very shortly, so you can find me there at Clifton A. Duncan as well.
Lots of great content that I'm going to put out there as well.
And be on the lookout for the Tom Soul Project, hopefully coming to a theater near you.
We just need some patrons and some venues.
So if you know anybody, reach out to me and we'll see what we can do.
Great.
And when you're ready, you're always welcome here, Paul.
Really come back and promote the show and get the support you need.
It's good to see you.
Thanks, Andrew.
Good to see you too.
Thanks for having me.
I'll see you again.
That's criminal.
It's criminal what has been done to Clifton Duncan.
And then there are other people like it.
I try to bring them on.
There's not that much one person can do, but there is something that someone can do, and they should do it because he's an enormous talent.
It goes without saying.
You can hear how intelligent and thoughtful he is as well.
But this is what we're up against, and it's serious business because the people who own the culture own the country.
And if you want to hear some more culture, come to the Andrew Clavin Show on Friday.