Jamie Bernstein says that complaints about Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose in Maestro are “a big pile of nonsense”.
When the first trailer for Maestro was unveiled back in August, it was met with something of a backlash – with some viewers arguing that the large prosthetic nose worn by Bradley Cooper to play Leonard Bernstein fuelled anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Shortly after the complaints, Bernstein’s family members put out a statement unequivocally defending Cooper’s choice and saying that “it breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of his efforts”.
The film has now been released in UK cinemas – before a Netflix release just in time for Christmas – and ahead of the launch, RadioTimes.com asked Bernstein’s daughters Jamie and Nina whether they were surprised by the initial criticisms.
“You know, trollers gonna troll,” Jamie replied. “There’s always going to be some persnickety person out there who thinks they’re being really righteous and deservedly aggrieved, and it’s just all a big pile of nonsense.”
She added: “And what we noticed just a week or two ago, when we were at Bradley’s house… we looked at him and he has a pretty prominent nose! They didn’t build it up [that much].”
Jamie also revealed that the nose had another function – it doubled as a device to help Cooper master her father’s unique speaking voice.
“We just found out that Kazu Hiro, who did the prosthetics, inserted a nose plug which doesn’t change the outer shape of the nose but changes the nasal passage shape so that Bradley’s voice would sound different,” she said.
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“It made him more nasal, which [Bernstein] was, because he had a deviated septum and he always had a stuffy nose and was always sneezing, blowing his nose and carrying on. And so that was one of the ways that he achieved replicating our dad’s voice!”
Meanwhile, producer Kristie Macosko Krieger also revealed her disappointment at the reactions following the original trailer release.
“I was very surprised because we worked so hard to get it as right as humanly possible,” she said.
“So, for us, it was trying to make Bradley Cooper look as authentically like Leonard Bernstein as you could look; that was just what we were going for. And the backlash was upsetting and hard to deal with.”
Maestro is now showing in UK cinemas and will release on Netflix on 20th December 2023. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.