Bradley Cooper made it very clear what (or, rather, who) comes first in a recent press conference for Maestro, his latest film that he directed, wrote, and starred in, portraying famed composer Leonard Bernstein.
As much of an obvious passion project as Maestro was and is to Cooper, his six-year-old daughter Lea is the priority of his life. This was on full display yesterday, when he rushed off stage at a press junket in New York City because he received a call from Lea’s school nurse.
“So sorry,” Cooper said while glancing at his phone, per Page Six. “The school nurse just called me. Can I just leave the room for a second to call them back and you can keep going? Is that all right?”
Cooper briefly returned to the stage to explain that he had to rush to Lea’s school to administer something school officials couldn’t. “I have to apply something that they won’t allow,” he said. “I have to do it, so it’s, like, a 10-minute walk.”
Cooper—who shares joint custody of Lea with ex Irina Shayk—could not have looked prouder of Lea as she joined her dad on the red carpet for the Maestro premiere, wearing a Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print dress and gold shoes. Shayk took to Instagram to gush over the duo, writing “So proud Daddy and Lea.”
Prior to her red carpet debut, Cooper and Shayk have been fiercely private about Lea, but Cooper has opened up in the past about his experience as a father: “I mean, you learn from your predecessor’s mistakes, and I’ll make tons that hopefully Lea will learn from,” he said in an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge. “To help unburden her with any of my bulls—t.”
Shayk, for her part, opened up to Elle in March 2021 about coparenting with her ex. “When I’m with my daughter, I’m 100 percent a mother, and when she’s with her dad, he’s 100 percent her dad,” she said. “Coparenting is parenting.”
That same year, a source told Us Weekly that Cooper and Shayk are “incredibly close” and are deeply focused on building an “amazing coparenting relationship,” adding “When Bradley gets breaks from filming, he enjoys being with family. He and Irina will have dinner together and partake in fun kid-friendly activities that involve their daughter.”
Lea herself actually appears briefly in Maestro, making a cameo and earning her first acting credit in the process. “Every single thing is absolutely shaded by, or brought into glorious colors, by the fact that I get to be a father to a wonderful human being,” Cooper said on the “SmartLess” podcast. “You have this wonderful thing or breakthrough with a script, or you have a wonderful moment on this set or in an editing room…you have, like, 40 of those moments every day with your kid that are that level of joy. That’s not spinning it, that’s just the truth.”
