Nina, Alexander and Jamie Bernstein at the “Maestro” premiere during the 61st New York Film Festival at David Geffen Hall on Oct. 2, 2023.Photo:Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Leonard Bernstein’s daughter Jamieand her siblings had a “surreal” experience seeing their family’s life portrayed on the big screen.
She said she and her siblings Alexander and Nina attended the Monday night premiere together and felt their late parents there with them.
“Seeing it in Geffen Hall — you know, the very hall where we watched our dad conduct hundreds of times as we were growing up — was so gratifying,” she said, “and such an almost mystical circularity for our lives that we shared with the three of us together, and with our parents.”
Bradley CooperdirectedMaestroand stars as Bernstein oppositeCarey Mulliganas his wife, the actress Felicia Montealegre. Maya Hawke portrays Jamie in the film.
Josh Singer, Jamie Berstein and Kristie Macosko Krieger at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 3, 2023.Theo Wargo/Getty
Theo Wargo/Getty
Bernstein died in 1990 at age 72, and Montealegre died of cancer in 1978 at 56. Jamie said seeing the film be made was an “enormous journey” for their family.
“All the way along it’s been surreal to see these two people becoming more and more and more like our own parents, but at different ages, and sometimes they’re older than we are now and sometimes they’re way younger and sometimes we’re the kids,” she said.
Leonard Bernstein with daughter Jamie, c. 1950s.Bettmann Archive/Getty
Bettmann Archive/Getty
“You can imagine, it’s like having a very strange dream, where you’re in your house but it’s sort of not your house, and you’re with your parents but they’re sort of not your parents but they are,” said Jamie. “It has that sort of dreamlike quality for us. But what a ride.
Jamie, who published the memoirFamous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernsteinin 2018,said Cooper kept her and her siblings involved throughout the process.
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“Bradley was so generous about including my brother and sister and me with him on his own journey with this film — which was something he didn’t have to do, necessarily,” she said. “Once we gave him permission to make the film, he could’ve just gone off and never consulted with us again, had he wanted to. But, instead he made us part of his own journey.”
Maestroco-writerJosh Singersaid Cooper had personal recordings and tapes of the Bernstein family that he “listened to ad nauseam.” Singer added, “So much so that he used to be able to write stuff and I’d go, ‘Oh, which book did you get that from?’ and he’d go, ‘No, no, no; I just wrote that.’ "
“He literally could channel Lenny in that way. That’s how deep he went. Bradley was a lightning rod once he came on,” said Singer.
Maestrois on Netflix Dec. 20.
source: people.com
