Bradley Cooper is earning rave reviews for his performance as the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, which the actor also directed. However, he recently admitted that a snafu during filming nearly derailed the project.
Sitting down with Poor Things’ fearless lead Emma Stone for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series, Cooper recounted filming the movie’s climactic church scene, a six-minute stretch that sees Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Resurrection” at Ely Cathedral in 1973. The actor divulged that his tempo issues on the first day of filming the standout scene led him to say “a prayer to Lenny” to get the performance right. In his words:
I messed up the whole first day. The minute I was behind tempo, it was over. So I woke up in the morning, walked into that church, and it was empty — we’re not supposed to shoot there that day. I was like, I got to give it one more shot. I brought everybody back in, and I actually said a prayer to Lenny in front of everybody, like, ‘Thank you for this opportunity. We’re going to do it again.’ That’s what’s in the movie. It was one take.
The prayer clearly worked, as the filmmaker was able to get a single take of the dramatic scene, which Stone said gave her “full body chills.” He likened to the whole ordeal to an out-of-body experience, saying:
My memory of that was that I was actually floating above the orchestra and that I was able to point to each musician.
Cooper has famously performed music for other roles, notably as troubled country crooner Jackson Maine in 2018’s A Star is Born (for which he changed his voice an entire octave) opposite real-life singer Lady Gaga. But he said that his other musical performances “didn’t even compare” to conducting as Bernstein. The actor/filmmaker continued:
I don’t know, but it was the most … Singing at the Oscars, playing at Glastonbury, didn’t even compare to what that experience was.
During the Variety discussion, Stone complimented her interview partner, saying that she felt like she was “watching a true conductor, a master at work” during his performance. But for all of the praise Cooper has received for the role, he’s also faced some serious pushback, especially when it comes to the heavy makeup transformation and subsequent prosthetic controversy surrounding Maestro.
Criticisms over the actor’s “problematic” decision to wear a prosthetic nose to portray the Jewish-American Bernstein in the film were potent enough that Jewish organizations. Even Bernstein’s own children weighed in on the controversy. Cooper responded to the critiques in November, admitting that though he initially considered not using the prosthetic, “it just didn’t look right” without it.
Even with the controversy, Bradley Cooper is looking to be a Best Actor frontrunner going into this year’s award season, with Maestro earning major critical acclaim among recent titles on the 2023 movie schedule. Following a limited theatrical release, the drama will be available to stream on December 20 with a Netflix subscription.