When Nelson Aspen returns to the NYC cabaret scene at “Don’t Tell Mama,” fresh from his one man performance at the Sydney Opera House, he’ll have a few of his former soap star friends in tow. Before he became the on-air Show Business Editor for Australia’s #1 morning show, Sunrise, Nelson was on Search for Tomorrow. Look for fellow castmate Anita Gillette (30 Rock, Moonstruck) to join him onstage on Friday, October 2nd, Colleen Zenk (30 years on As the World Turns) will accompany Aspen on Friday, October 9th. And on Friday, October 16, it’ll be Karen Jacobsen, a fixture on the cabaret scene, better known as the Australian voice of SIRI.
“The show will be a fun, Gothamized version of what I did at the Sydney Opera House,” he told Hamptons.com. Aspen returned to New York after 22 years in Los Angeles, with his apartment search featured in The New York Times. “You get less for murder,” he quipped. “It’s a marvelous second act in middle age coming back where I first aspired to sing.”
Nelson has appeared in daytime television all over the world: in England for ten years, in Ireland, where he hosted his own how to series, NEW with NELSON!, for eight years, and recently, in New Zealand as a celebrity correspondent. “My friends and family don’t see me on TV, but if you go to Australia, you can’t escape me. I’m on five days a week for 12 years, doing all the celebrity reporting,” he shared. “For 20 something years, I’ve been saying ‘Good Morning’ into the camera, but it’s never morning for me.” He’s also written five books, and appeared extensively on such American celebrity-driven shows as Extra, Access Hollywood, Inside Edition, and appeared on TV Guide Television for three seasons.
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Aspen with Christie Brinkley. (Courtesy Photo) |
Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Cate Blanchett and Kelly Clarkson like him. “The first time I ever met Russell Crowe, he came up to say he admired my work,” remembers Aspen. “I said, ‘You have good taste in television.'” ‘My wife controls the remote,’ he replied.
“What David Hasselhoff has become for Germany in some ways I have become in Australia,” Nelson likes to joke. “I wanted Hugh to come next month, but he’s doing his own one man show in Australia.”
For tickets, visit www.donttellmamanyc.com.
