Jamie, the eldest of Leonard Bernstein’s three kids, tells PEOPLE this week, “We had no concept that Bradley had such a high degree of fervency and dedication when he set his sights on something. There are even moments in the film where he is in motion and looks so much like our dad that we are taken aback.”
For his 48th year, Cooper collaborated with an Academy Award winner, Kazu Hiro, who was responsible for Gary Oldman’s remarkable portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, to help him become the ex-conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Four prosthetics and two bodysuits were created by Hiro to illustrate the transformation of Bernstein throughout his career from 1943 to the age of 72, when he passed away in 1990. Hiro reveals to PEOPLE the details of his work, stating he had created 137 singular pieces, varying in size from small to large.
An interesting tale about Leonard Bernstein is depicted in the movie Maestro, with Bradley Cooper in the leading role. To get to know more about the composer, it is important to understand his tumultuous romantic history. For Cooper to replicate Bernstein’s nasally voice, Hiro fashioned a nose plug that the actor wore to alter his inflections and the shape of his nose. Hiro was in awe of Bradley’s commitment to openness and his never-ending quest for excellence.
At the outset, Cooper was assailed for his decision to don a prosthetic nose to portray the Jewish conductor. However, Bernstein’s children soon declared that they had no issue with the makeup and that their father would have been “perfectly fine” with it too.
Cooper, the co-writer and director of Maestro, asked Mark Bridges, the Oscar-winning costume designer, to clothe his on-screen persona. Bridges assembled looks consisting of everything from double-breasted suits to turtlenecks, sometimes replicating outfits from pictures of Bernstein. As Bridges joked, “He looked so great in them, and if it’s working, don’t fiddle with it.”
During the lengthy production of the movie, Cooper stayed in contact with Leonard Bernstein’s three offspring — Jamie, Alexander, and Nina — to make sure his representation of their father was accurate.
Jamie remarks that the manner in which he was welcomed by him throughout the project was very generous. They ended up having a sense of trust in him. Currently, audiences can catch Carey Mulligan in the feature Maestro in select cinemas, with the movie being made available on Netflix from the 20th of December.