He is the son of Marian Wright Edelman, former civil rights leader and aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, and Peter Edelman, former aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation, and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

[2][3] Edelman graduated from Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. in July 1992,[4] before going on to earn his bachelor's degree from Yale University.

Previously he directed three HBO Sports documentaries: Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals,[6][7][11] The Curious Case of Curt Flood (2011)[6] and the Emmy Award-winning Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush.

[15] In 2018, it was reported that Edelman would be developing a biopic with writer Rowan Ricardo Phillips for Legendary Entertainment, based on the life of baseball player Roberto Clemente.

[17] He was recruited to the project for Netflix in 2019 by Lisa Nishimura, then vice president of independent film and documentary features, with the promise of access to "the vault", Prince’s archive of unreleased material.