The teaser to Maestro, a forthcoming biopic of composer Leonard Bernstein, stars a large prosthetic nose perched on actor Bradley Cooper's face. "Jewface" is trending on social media and articles about the tweets are appearing.
Social media users also weighed in, with one writing: "Bradley Cooper is putting himself in an insanely large prosthetic nose to play a Jewish man in Maestro and we're all just supposed to act like that's cool and normal?"
"Just looked up a picture of the real Leonard Bernstein…. the big antisemitic prosthetic nose on Bradley Cooper was definitely not necessary…" another commenter wrote.
If you're going to make a film about a guy with a big nose, it would be best to cast a guy with a big nose to play him. That said, I sense that all the well-meaning nose-measuring going on invites likewise in bad faith. Also, Bernstein's kids are fine with it.
"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. 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.
Here's the trailer, embedded below.
