Bradley Cooper is stepping into the producer and director’s seat for Netflix’s Maestro, in which he stars as American conductor and cultural icon Leonard Bernstein. The film, which details the lifelong relationship between Bernstein and wife Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein — played by Carey Mulligan — released its first trailer this week.
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The trailer starts out with Bernstein and Montealegre sitting back to back in the middle of a grassy field, playing a number-guessing game. After shouting out multiple wrong numbers, Montealegre suggests the budding star “try to just concentrate.” Bernstein quips, “Maybe I should stop and think for a second,” to which she replies, “You should stop and think because I am sending it to you … oh, we need to build up a very strong connection.”
Scenes from Bernstein’s life then play in succession, from him falling in love with Montealegre and conducting a young choir, to receiving high praise from people within the music industry and having extramarital affairs with men. The trailer concludes with the pair walking with their hands wrapped around each other toward an area surrounded by trees.
Following the trailer’s arrival, Cooper and the film received some backlash for the prominence of the prosthetic nose Cooper wears, with some claiming it to be an anti-Semitic costuming choice. “The genuinely insane part is that standard pre-prosthetic Bradley Cooper looks much more like the historical Leonard Bernstein than the film version,” one Twitter user wrote. Another added, “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.”
Bernstein’s three children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein, chimed in on the discourse, stating that they were largely included in the process of the film. The family additionally stated that their father would likely not have an issue with the use of a prosthetic nose being used to bring his character to life.
“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,” the children shared in a statement posted to Instagram. “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.”
Maestro is scheduled to arrive Dec. 20 on Netflix and will be shown in select theaters starting Nov. 22. The film will premiere at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 2 at David Geffen Hall, where the New York Philharmonic, which Bernstein led for over a decade, plays.
Watch the trailer for Maestro in the video above, and see comments about Cooper’s appearance — as well as the statement from the Bernstein family — below.
