This is something I did not expect to wake up to. Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” has already been hit with controversy.
Cooper is facing backlash over his apparent use of a prosthetic nose in his depiction of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming movie "Maestro."
Netflix released the trailer for the film on Tuesday, many on social media we’re quick to point out the, er, change in Cooper's appearance. He’s wearing a prosthetic nose and that’s antisemitic.
“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?” someone wrote.
"Just looked up a picture of the real Leonard Bernstein…. the big antisemitic prosthetic nose on Bradley Cooper was definitely not necessary…" another social media user wrote.
"I saw Bradley cooper play the elephant man with no prosthetics on Broadway," another social media user said. "But then he plays a Jew and decides he needs a huge nose?"
The term "Jewface” is being tossed around, Cooper is not Jewish, Bernstein was.
Sarah Silverman kickstarted the "Jewface" debate back in 2021, saying that the film industry had a "long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews." "And not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being.” (via The Sarah Silverman Podcast.")
Silverman describes “Jewface” as “when a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness front and center, often with makeup or changing of features, big fake nose, all the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection."
Ironically enough, Sarah Silverman plays Bernstein’s sister in “Maestro,” will she now disavow the entire film?