Bradley Cooper's portrayal of Leonard Bernstein isn't 'Jewface' but 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

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• Controversy erupted over Bradley Cooper's prosthetic nose in his new Leonard Bernstein biopic.
• Some called the prosthetic an example of "Jewface," but there are much more egregious examples.
• Non-Jewish actors' portrayal of Jewish tropes in "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is more problematic.

Last week, as the first trailer for Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein biopic, "Maestro," made its way around the internet, so did a debate: Was the prosthetic nose designed to make Cooper look like the famous composer actually "Jewface"? Should Cooper, who is not Jewish, be able to play the Jewish composer?

According to Bernstein's children, yes. Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein told Insider last week in a statement that they gave their blessing to Cooper and the film: "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."

The Anti-Defamation League also weighed in Monday, saying in a statement to Variety: "Throughout history, Jews were often portrayed in antisemitic films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large, hooked noses. This film, which is a biopic on the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, is not that."

Actors have long used prosthetics in biographic films — think Nicole Kidman in "The Hours" or Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour" — to more closely resemble the real-life people they're playing.

The ire over Cooper's supposed Jewface transgression seems, at best, misguided and misplaced. Yes, Cooper, who isn't Jewish, is playing a man who was Jewish. But Bernstein's life wasn't centered on his experience as a Jewish man, and as far as we can tell the coming biopic, directed by Cooper, isn't either. Instead, it's focused on his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan. Bernstein's Jewishness is incidental to the story.

If we're to talk about a problematic portrayal of Jewishness by non-Jewish actors, then the most egregious offender in recent years has got to be "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." The Prime Video comedy ran for five seasons and garnered heaps of praise and fans, but it featured non-Jews playing some of the most stereotypically Jewish characters seen in years.

"There's this 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," the comedian Sarah Silverman explained on her namesake podcast in 2021. "One could argue, for instance, that a gentile playing Joan Rivers correctly would be doing what is actually called Jewface."

Silverman went on to define "Jewface" as when non-Jews portray Jewish people with "Jewishness front and center — often with makeup or changing of features, a big fake nose, all the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection." Jewface is about caricature — appreciative or not — rather than straight depiction.

Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), along with her parents, Abe and Rose Weissman (Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle), were all played by non-Jews. The show's creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino (she of "Gilmore Girls" fame), told Vulture in 2013 that her mother was Baptist and her father was Jewish and she was raised Jewish, "sort of."

"Maisel" captured and capitalized on the mythos of Jewish comedy and comedians, creating a protagonist whose life seemed very much modeled after Jewish comedy queens like Joan Rivers and Jean Carroll, and who interacted with real-life famous Jewish comedians like Lenny Bruce.

There are stories about Jewish people for whom their Jewishness is not centered. And there are plenty of instances in which non-Jews are playing Jewish characters. But in the case of "Mrs. Maisel," the entire show rested upon an overwrought, stereotypical sense of New York Jewishness.

Having non-Jewish actors play characters whose arcs were rooted in those stereotypes feels deeply cringey and uncomfortable — especially given that Brosnahan received an Emmy for her portrayal.

The portrayal of ethnic Judaism she and other non-Jewish actors on the show exploited — self-deprecating and neurotic — is the same stereotype that has often been weaponized against us. That characterization is something we Jews often lovingly embrace among ourselves, but in the hands of others it's been used too many times to put us in a corner.

As for casting Brosnahan in particular, it may be, as the Broad Street Review writer Wendy Rosenfield noted, that Brosnahan is Hollywood's perfect Jewish woman because she's not: "Why not put someone like Jenny Slate in the title role? Too Jewish? Nobody would believe a girl like that could get a life like this? Even in the context of the era's German-Jewish snobbery, it's hard not to notice the underlying sentiment in the show's casting."

It makes Bradley Cooper's prosthetic nose seem small in comparison.

Correction: August 22, 2023 — An earlier version of this story mistakenly named Phyllis Diller among the Jewish comedy queens whom the Midge Maisel character seemed modeled after. Diller was not Jewish. The story also misspelled Carey Mulligan's name and referred to the Weissmans as Midge Maisel's in-laws. They were her parents. 

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