Bradley Cooper is earning rave reviews for his performance as the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, which the actor also directed. However, he recently admitted that a snafu during filming nearly derailed the project.
Sitting down with Poor Things' fearless lead Emma Stone for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Cooper recounted filming the movie's climactic church scene, a six-minute stretch that sees Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's "Resurrection" at Ely Cathedral in 1973. The actor divulged that his tempo issues on the first day of filming the standout scene led him to say "a prayer to Lenny" to get the performance right. In his words:
