Photos: Chris Emeott
Don Shelby and Nancy Nelson are venerable veterans behind the TV camera and on local stages, including Chanhassen Dinner Theatres (CDT), where they make a return engagement (and final run!) February 4–26 at the Playhouse Theatre in Love Letters. “Nancy and Don are also our dear friends, which makes this project so meaningful and personal for all of us and our audiences,” says Tamara Kangas Erickson, CDT artistic director.
A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters brings Shelby to the stage as Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Nelson in the role of Melissa Gardner. (Read more about the play below.) After each show, guests are invited to stay for a short Q&A with Shelby and Nelson.
Why wait? While Excelsior’s Shelby and Nelson, who has a family cabin on Lake Minnetonka, have question-asking in their DNA, Lake Minnetonka Magazine flipped the script and asked the duo some Proust Questionnaire-inspired queries about their thoughts on broadcasting, theater and life—near and far.
Nancy Nelson
What’s your first love—acting or broadcasting? So hard. I love both. Wouldn’t want to be without either. Perhaps by a hair—broadcasting.
Who would you most like to see sitting in the first row of a stage performance? My husband, Bill [Billy] Carlson, [and] my parents Willis and Florence Nelson
What was your first theater role? At MacPhail Drama School—Snow White—8 years old
What’s on your acting bucket list? What I can never have—I always wanted to be a singer/dancer in musical theater. I don’t have the talent.
What’s your greatest on-stage fear? I have never been afraid to go on stage. I am always afraid of disappointing the audience.
As an audience member, what was your favorite theater performance? There are so many for different reasons. Most charismatic: Hugh Jackman The Boy from Oz
What are your most overused words when describing a great performance? Moving, joyous, intelligent, remarkable—but I mean them whenever I say them.
Who is the greatest stage actor? Impossible. So many. Comedy? Drama? Musical? I love actors. I’m a huge fan. I always think the greatest is the one I’ve just seen!
What’s your favorite play? The theater is powerful. I like plays that stir emotions, cause me to reflect and think. There have been a few of those. They are personal to me—private, because of how they changed me.
What production deserves a revival? The Boy from Oz
Who is your admired broadcaster? Barbara Walters. She fought the battles, forged the path for every woman in broadcasting today.
How about your most memorable broadcast? Covered live: Citywide funeral of fallen L.A. police officers, a Space Shuttle landing, a spacecraft launch at Cape Canaveral, a political presidential convention [and] the red carpet at the Academy Awards
Can you share a humorous on air blooper? I was anchoring the news live from Dodger Stadium opening day. For a segment, they put me in a bat boy baseball outfit. It was a little big. Interviewing one of the players, standing on the mound, the pants fell down!
What’s the greatest achievement of your career? Surviving, being able to move through changes and remain on the air, on stage for decades. I’ve been so lucky.
Do you have a treasured career possession? Every new TV/radio show/stage production, my Billy sent a telegram and a love note of support. I have every one.
Who do you most wish you had the opportunity to interview? Susan B. Anthony, Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Abigail and John Adams, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson [and] Golda Meir
What is your current state of mind when it comes to the Twin Cities’ news scene? I am very grateful I was anchoring news at the time I did.
What are you curious about? Everything I don’t know about—everything. I just want to learn and grow always.
Is there something you still want to learn? On a small personal level, play the piano and the guitar
What is your favorite journey? Every time Billy and I got in the car or got on an airplane to go anywhere together
What’s been your biggest life challenge? Learning to get up every day and make life joyful and meaningful without my Billy
What’s your favorite way to stay physically active? Pilates, water aerobics, especially walking my little Yorkie Buddy Boy 2 miles a day
Name six ideal dining companions. Bill Carlson in all six chairs
What is your greatest extravagance? I’m not at all extravagant, but I will spend more on a ticket than I should to see someone or some production on stage.
What’s on your reading list? Huge list of biographies and autobiographies of people who changed human and social conditions, historical happenings and events
What’s your TV-watching guilty pleasure? Binging The West Wing, The Tudors, The Newsroom, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
What is your favorite Lake Minnetonka area spot to dine, shop or relax? The tiny front deck of the tiny cabin my parents bought on the lake when I was 8 years old. I still have it.
- Two decades as a professional actor the Old Log Theatre (Two weeks out of high school in 1965–1983 and 2003–2006)
- Midnight weather girl at WCCO-TV (1965–1969)
- Former Miss Minnesota (1967)
- Host of What’s New? and news anchor/reporter at Channel 11-TV (1970–1983)
- Played a role in Airport (1970)
- News anchor at KKTV in Los Angeles, where she won two Emmy Awards (1983–1986)
- Worked at KABC radio in Los Angeles (1986–1991)
- Named Forbes as the most influential international infomercial presenter of the decade (2000)
- Inducted into the Broadcast Hall of Fame (2009)
- Greeter-Emcee at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres (2019–present)
Don Shelby
What’s your first love—acting or broadcasting? Journalism
Who would you most like to see sitting in the first row of a stage performance? My Mom and Dad
What was your first theater role? Ali Hakim in Oklahoma!
What’s on your acting bucket list? Richard III
What’s your greatest on-stage fear? Going up (forgetting my lines)
As an audience member, what was your favorite theater performance? Mark Twain Tonight! with Hal Holbrook What are your most overused words when describing a great performance? Silence. Unable to explain the force.
Who is the greatest stage actor? Lord Laurence Olivier
What’s your favorite play? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Edward Albee, playwright]
What production deserves a revival? South Pacific
Who is your most admired broadcaster? Three-way tie: [Walter] Cronkite, [Edward R.] Murrow, Dave Moore
How about your most memorable broadcast? The Iron Crib (orphaned children of Romania)
Can you share a humorous on-air blooper? I once had trouble with the word organism, and I said, orgasm. Worse, I corrected the mistake by saying, “I mean, orgasm.”
What’s the greatest achievement of your career? Never being found out
Do you have a treasured career possession? The Emmys and Peabodys pale in comparison to a single sheet of paper, awarding me first place in national reporting by the American Academy of Pediatrics for the best journalism that year in furtherance of the welfare of children.
Who do you most wish you had the opportunity to interview? [Former President] Barack Obama
What is your current state of mind when it comes to the Twin Cities’ news scene? Without direct criticism, generally across the country, we have fallen into the trap of giving people what they “want” to know as opposed to giving people what they “need to know.”
What are you curious about? Everything, all the time
Is there something you still want to learn? A hundred times a day, I am confronted with material I do not know of. Multiply that by 78 years. I want to learn everything I don’t know.
What is your favorite journey? Toward enlightenment, leaving ignorance behind
What’s been your biggest life challenge? Overcoming my naive stupidity
What’s your favorite way to stay physically active? Being in the woods
Name six ideal dining companions. Ben Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ, W.E.B. Du Bois, Hedy Lamarr and Marie Curie
What is your greatest extravagance? Gear. I must have equipment, tools, gadgets.
What’s on your reading list? Currently reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain. Any book by Ashley Shelby
What’s your TV-watching guilty pleasure? YouTube instructional videos. I’m currently learning the geology of gold mining.
What is your favorite Lake Minnetonka area spot to dine, shop or relax? Relax by the lake; eat at Old Southern BBQ in Excelsior; shop at Ace Hardware in Shorewood
- Considered the most decorated local news anchor in the country with two George Foster Peabody awards, three National Emmys with the WCCO-TV I-Team and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Society of Professional Journalists, among hundreds of other honors
- Anchored WCCO-TV’s newscasts for 32 of his 55-year career in journalism
- After his retirement from the news desk in 2011, he appeared at The Lab Theater, Mixed Blood Theatre and Varsity Theater
- Performed more than 200 times as Mark Twain in performing arts centers throughout the state, New Orleans and aboard the Delta Queen riverboat on the Mississippi River in St. Louis
- Inducted to the Broadcast Hall of Fame, as well as the Silver and Gold Circles by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
- Trustee of the Science Museum of Minnesota and seven other boards, ranging from climate change to racial healing
- Board of directors of VocalEssence
- Inducted into Indiana’s Delaware County Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003
- Author of The Season Never Ends–Wins, Losses, and the Wisdom of the Court (available on Amazon)
- Raised more than $100 million in charity donations
Love Notes
Love Letters, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated play by American playwright A.R. Gurney, has graced stages on Broadway and around the world. It was first performed at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres (CDT) in 1993. “Our audiences have loved this show every time we’ve presented it,” says Tamara Kangas Erickson, CDT artistic director.
Don Shelby and Nancy Nelson made their first appearance in a CDT production of the play in 2022, returning last September and next month to recapture their performances.
The two-character play tells the story of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, born into wealth and position, who begin a string of lifelong correspondence. “It is told through their personal letters to each other from second grade through adolescence, maturity and into middle age, spanning over five decades of their lives,” says Kris Howland, CDT public relations director.
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres
Instagram: @chanhassendt
