On Tuesday, the trailer for Bradley Cooper's upcoming movie Maestro was released, with the Leonard Bernstein biopic Cooper's first project as director since his hit 2018 film A Star Is Born.
Maestro is about the life and career of the composer, who was Jewish, and is mainly centered on his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein. However, Cooper has faced backlash for casting himself in the lead role despite not being Jewish.
The scrutiny has intensified following the trailer's release, with Cooper being criticized for wearing a prosthetic nose for his performance as Bernstein — a move that has been branded "antisemitic."
And when side-by-side comparison photos of the real Bernstein alongside Cooper started to circulate online, people were dismayed to see that Cooper's actual nose was a more accurate match, and they argued that this was proof that the prosthetic was only being used to feed into racist stereotypes.
"The prosthetic looks inaccurate - Bradley Cooper’s real nose would have been a closer match. So the prosthetic functions as a clumsy racial signifier more than anything else," one person tweeted.
"This feels especially sinister because Bradley Cooper’s nose is already the same shape and size, if not slightly larger, than Leonard Bernstein’s was," another tweeted.
Someone else 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."
And one social media user took the opportunity to point out that Jake Gyllenhaal previously shared his disappointment at losing a bid for the rights to make a film about Bernstein.
Gyllenhaal's mom is Jewish, and he was raised in the Jewish faith. In 2021, he acknowledged that he had been hoping to play "one of the most preeminent Jewish artists in America" for almost two decades.
Gyllenhaal told Deadline at the time: “No one likes to admit this, but we got beat at our own game. That’s basically what happened. There’s really nothing more to say about it than that."
He went on, "There’s always another project. Sticking your neck out, hoping to get to tell the stories you love and that have been in your heart for a very long time, is something to be proud of. And that story, that idea of playing one of the most preeminent Jewish artists in America and his struggle with his identity, was in my heart for 20-some-odd years, but sometimes those things don’t work out."
In addition to the backlash surrounding the prosthetic, Bernstein fans are also concerned that the musician has been “straightwashed" in the movie.
While he was married to Montealegre Bernstein for more than 25 years, until her death in 1978, he was known to have affairs with men. In 2018, Bernstein's daughter Jamie revealed that her mother had acknowledged this in a letter to Bernstein in 1951 — the year they wed.
"You are a homosexual and may never change,” the letter read. “I am willing to accept you as you are.”
Following her mom's death, Jamie recalled her father's "slow creep toward overt gayness." Bernstein's West Side Story collaborator Arthur Laurents also referred to the composer as “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.”
While it is currently unclear how much Bernstein's sexuality will be explored in Maestro, some expressed their disappointment that it wasn't more overtly referenced in the film's trailer.
