Bradley Cooper found himself in the middle of some strong backlash as he appeared to wear a large prosthetic nose in the trailer for Maestro, a biopic of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein.
Cooper has co-written, produced and directed the upcoming movie which will tell the story of Bernstein, renowned conductor and composer who was best known for writing the music for West Side Story.
Bernstein was the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants to the US. Meanwhile, Cooper is not. The actor-turned-director was accused of ‘exaggerating’ his looks with the common ‘Jewface’ narrative that the community finds offensive.
However, the US-based international Jewish organisation, which fights antisemitism and bigotry, issued a statement on Monday, which refutes such claims and defends Cooper for his upcoming Netflix project.
“Throughout history, Jews were often portrayed in antisemitic films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large, hooked noses,” the ADL said in a statement to media, first released to TMZ.
“This film, which is a biopic on the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, is not that.”
Last week, Bernstein’s children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina, also defended A Star is Born actor for his efforts.
“It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of [Cooper’s] efforts. It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose,” they said in the statement.
“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.”
Maestro will premiere on September 2, at the Venice film festival and will be briefly shown in cinemas in late November before being released on Netflix on December 20.