Leonard Bernstein’s Family Say They’re ‘Perfectly Fine’ With Bradley Cooper’s Fake Nose in ‘Maestro’ Trailer
The three children of late conductor/composer/pianist Leonard Bernstein have defended Bradley Cooper‘s artistic choices amid criticism that the actor/director’s portrayal of their father in the upcoming biopic Maestro leans into an antisemitic stereotype.
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After the first trailer for the long-awaited film starring and directed by Cooper dropped earlier this week, some commenters questioned the star’s choice to wear a large prosthetic nose, an image that they said amplified a hurtful Jewish stereotype.
“Bradley Cooper included the three of us along every step of his amazing journey as he made his film about our father,” Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein said in a statement; while Cooper is not Jewish, Bernstein was born to Jewish parents. “We were touched to the core to witness the depth of his commitment, his loving embrace of our father’s music, and the sheer open-hearted joy he brought to his exploration. It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of his efforts.”
They added that, “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well. Any strident complaints around this issue strike us above all as disingenuous attempts to bring a successful person down a notch — a practice we observed all too often perpetrated on our own father.”
The Netflix film co-written by Cooper as well, is focused on the beloved composer’s relationship with Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), who the conductor married in 1951; the film is co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, among others.
One of those criticizing the choice was Joel Swanson, a Jewish History PhD student at the Univ. of Chicago, who wrote, “This isn’t about making a non-Jewish actor look more like Leonard Bernstein; it’s about making a non-Jewish actor look more like a Jewish stereotype.” After his comment was picked up by a number of major news outlets — including in a Time magazine article that asked a representation question about whether “only actors of a certain ethnicity or marginalized group” should portray characters with that same background — Swanson clarified on Wednesday that he was not advocating for that position.
“I just think the nose is a little gross, that’s all,” Swanson wrote of the use of the nose prosthetics as other commenters noted that when Cooper starred in The Elephant Man on Broadway in 2015 he chose not to wear prosthetics to portray John Merrick, who suffered from severe physical deformities.
Maestro is slated to premiere at the Venice Film Festival later this month and hit select theaters on Nov. 22 and Netflix on Dec. 20. So far Cooper has not made a public statement about the controversy and a spokesperson for Netflix had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
Bernstein’s children also noted in their post that “at all times” during the making of the film they could “feel the profound respect and yes, the love that Bradley brought to his portrait of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, our mother Felicia. We feel so fortunate to have had this experience with Bradley, and we can’t wait for the world to see his creation.”
See Swanson and the Bernstein’s tweets and the movie trailer below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
