The release of Bradley Cooper's new Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro hasn't come without its fair share of controversy. In the movie, Cooper dons a prosthetic nose to play the iconic composer, which led to accusations of antisemitism from some critics.
For a while, Cooper just let Bernstein's family—who had no problem with the prosthetic piece—do the talking. But now, the Oscar-nominated actor is responding to the backlash he received as a result of the costuming choice.
Cooper admitted he was taken aback at first that there was such a negative reaction to the nose. “Nothing catches me off guard," he told Gayle King on CBS Mornings. "You never know what’s going to happen. I’ve done this whole project out of love and it’s so clear to me where I come from. My nose is very similar to Lenny’s actually. The prosthetic is actually like a silk sheet."
Behind the scenes, he waffled on whether he should even go forward with using the nose. But as the film's director as well as its star, he made a decision to slap it on.
"I thought, 'Maybe we don’t need to do it because we could take time off prep,'" he wondered. “But it’s all about balance, and, you know, my lips are nothing like Lenny’s, and my chin. And so we had that, and it just didn’t look right [without the prosthetic]."
"We just had to do it," he concluded. "Otherwise I just wouldn’t believe he’s a human being."
After Cooper came under fire for the larger-than-usual nose, Bernstein's children Jamie, Alexander, and Nina had his back. "Bradley Cooper included the three of us along every step of his amazing journey as he made his film about our father," they said in a statement. "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."
"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," they added. "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."
Maestro begins a limited theatrical run on Nov. 22 before hitting Netflix on Dec. 20.
from Men's Journal https://ift.tt/fmNUWGO
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