The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has defended Bradley Cooper’s decision to wear a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein in his upcoming biopic about the legendary composer, after the actor was accused of performing in “Jewface”.
The US-based international Jewish organisation, which fights antisemitism and bigotry, issued a statement on Monday stating that the use of prosthetics was not inherently antisemitic.
“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.”
Bernstein, the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants to the US, was a renowned conductor and composer who was perhaps best known for writing the music for West Side Story.
Cooper directed, cowrote and stars in Maestro, which centers on Bernstein’s lifelong relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan. The film will premiere on 2 September at the Venice film festival and will be briefly shown in cinemas in late November before being released on Netflix on 20 December.
When pictures first emerged of Cooper on set as Bernstein, some criticised the use of prosthetics, with the Hollywood Reporter’s chief TV critic, Daniel Fienberg, calling it “problematic” and described the film as “ethnic cosplay”.
In a statement posted on social media last week, Bernstein’s children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina, defended Cooper against what they called “disingenuous” criticism, saying: “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. 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.”
The controversy followed objections to the casting of Cillian Murphy as nuclear physicist J Robert Oppenheimer in the biopic directed by Christopher Nolan, and the casting of Helen Mirren as the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir – two non-Jewish actors playing notable Jewish figures.
