As with 2018’s A Star is Born, the upcoming 2023 movie Maestro sees Bradley Cooper both directing and performing on camera, this time as conductor Leonard Bernstein. The first Maestro trailer premiered back in August, and while this wasn’t the first time looks at the actor’s wild makeup transformation had been shared with the public, he was once again accused of “Jewface” for wearing a prominent prosthetic nose while inhabiting the role. Well, it turns out that during production, Cooper would show up to the Maestro set at 1 a.m. to add the Bernstein nose that he’s been roasted for over the last several weeks.
This piece of information comes from Kazu Hiro, the two-time Oscar-winning makeup artist who was responsible for making Cooper looked like Bernstein, whose accomplishments included being music director of the New York Philharmonic and creating the music for the West Side Story musical. Hiro recalled how it would take over five hours to turn Cooper into Bernstein, which included “the bodysuit and arms,” and that making Cooper look like Bernstein when he was past 70 was “the most difficult.” Hiro continued:
The last stage, the whole time, our call time was 1 in the morning. The other thing was he wanted makeup to be finished before the crew call, so he would appear as Lenny to set up the shoot and everything. That also kind of made our call time two hours earlier than normal, so that was quite tough.
Kazu Hiro talked about his time on Maestro to the audience who watched a screening of the movie at the New York Film Festival (via EW), so now we know important it was for Bradley Cooper to loom like Leonard Bernstein even while he was working behind the camera. For the man to show up at 1 a.m., two hours before almost everyone else working on the biopic would arrive, shows remarkable dedication. That said, there was also undoubtedly a element of practicality in play too, because if Cooper kicked off a day of production looking like himself, then blocked off time in the middle of the shoot to undergo the Bernstein makeup process, that would have eaten up a lot of valuable time.
Hiro added that Cooper’s time in the makeup chair varied depending on the period of Leonard Bernstein’s life that was being covered in Maestro. For example, it took two and a half hours to lift the Rocket Raccoon voice actor’s face to make him look like he was in his 20s, whereas other periods varied between two and three hours. The makeup artist added:
[We had to] keep adding because as he gets older, we had to add more elements. The younger stage was the nose and lips and chin and a wig. After the third stage, he started having cheek and neck [additions.]
Neither Kazu Hiro nor any of the other creative talent that attended Maestro’s NYFF screening addressed the “Jewface” controversy surrounding Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose. However, shortly after the trailer was released, Bernstein’s children released a joint statement saying that they were “perfectly fine” with this creative decision, and that “any strident complaints around this issue” struck them as being “disingenuous attempts to bring a successful person down a notch.” Cooper is joined in the Maestro cast by Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Michael Urie, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Miriam Shor and Alexa Swinton.
Maestro will begin its limited theatrical release on November 22, and Netflix subscribers will be able to stream it starting December 20. Be sure to look through the Netflix movie schedule to learn what other features the streamer has left to deliver before 2023 is over.