The Big Picture

• Perri Nemiroff moderates a Crumpa FYC Q&A with Maestro star Carey Mulligan.
• During their conversation, Mulligan revisits her journey with the Bradley Cooper-directed film, which began in 2018.
• She also details some of the toughest scenes to film and reveals a little detail in the movie that was inspired by a childhood game she played with her brother.

In Maestro, Carey Mulligan gives what’s being heralded as « one of the best performances of the year » as actress, Felicia Montealegre, the partner of acclaimed American conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein, portrayed by director and lead, Bradley Cooper. Her collaboration with Cooper in the discovery of Montealegre’s pivotal role in Bernstein’s life has all eyes on Mulligan as a possible Oscar contender for Best Actress, but the role wasn’t without its challenges.

Following our FYC screening of Maestro with Landmark Theatres, Crumpa’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with Mulligan for an exclusive Q&A to talk about joining forces with actor-director Bradley Cooper and how she first got involved with the biopic way back in 2018. She shares the advice that’s been a foundation of her career, and the moments she tackled on the set of Maestro that most intimidated her.

Check out the full interview in the video above, or you can read it in transcript form below to find out how Steven Spielberg, who served as a producer on the film, inspired Mulligan’s performance as Montealegre, how a childhood game she played with her brother led to a memorable scene in the movie, and what sets Cooper’s directorial style apart from other filmmakers.

Read Our ‘Maestro’ Review

PERRI NEMIROFF: I want to go back to the beginning of the Maestro process for you because I know you signed on without reading a script, and it was back in 2018, so I don’t even know if A Star Is Born was available yet. At that point, what was it about Bradley’s pitch that gave you confidence in his story and in him as a director?

CAREY MULLIGAN: Yeah, it was 2018. I was doing a play off-Broadway in New York, a one-woman show, and he came to see me in that, and then he asked me to do this. There wasn’t this script, there was a script that Josh Singer had been working on for a while. But yes, Bradley and Josh were going to come back to it afresh and start their story. But he showed me A Star Is Born. It wasn’t out but it was finished, so I got to go and watch it. I took my friend, Zoe Kazan, because I think she’s very clever and has good taste, and I was like, “It’s good, isn’t it?” She was like, “Yeah, it’s really good!” The whole project was so exciting, and obviously A Star is Born was amazing, and the more I learned about Felicia, the more excited I was to play her.

I have a lot of questions about learning about her and applying it to your performance, but I wanted to go back to signing on briefly. You first signed on in 2018 and then the movie didn’t go into production until late 2021. You made a bunch of movies in between, so is there any particular film or experience you had during that period that you wound up looking back on and saying to yourself, “I’m so glad that happened before Maestro?”

MULLIGAN: Oh, that’s such a good question. After that, I did Promising Young Woman, and then I did The Dig, and then we went into a global pandemic and everything shut down. So, in that time, I think originally Maestro was meant to go in 2020. Obviously, it didn’t. Then again, in 2021. It pushed until 2022, is when we actually started shooting, so there was a lot of time in there. And actually, the more time we had the better, really, because it meant that every time I was in New York or LA, Bradley and I would get together, usually with Josh Singer, who co-wrote the script with Bradley, and we’d read it out. Then we got to do cool things, like Yannick Séguin, who was the musical supervisor on the film and helped Bradley with all the conducting, invited us to Philadelphia, and we went and narrated Candide for three performances with the Philadelphia Philharmonic. So we got to do lots of, I don’t know, scary bonding, fun things, which I think meant that by the time we actually got to filming it, Bradley and I were very close and had done lots of work on these characters.

This leans into that a little bit. Can you tell us something about your prep process that stays the same from film to film, but then also something specific to Felicia that was a first time prep element for you here?

MULLIGAN: I mean, lots of firsts with this one. There’s nothing that’s from one to the next, really. I think with theater, I always felt like when I did a play I had a lot more bandwidth to do prep. I don’t know if that’s because there’s designated rehearsal time and with film there rarely is, or at least in my experience. But with this one, it was clear from Bradley that he really wanted to do [something] very, very intensive, like a workshop, just the two of us, to work on Lenny and Felicia, but also that the dialect and the way that they spoke would be very specific. So it was lots and lots of work with Tim Monich, who’s an amazing dialect coach.

This Element Was Key to Carey Mulligan Finding Her ‘Maestro’ Stride

This might be overly prescribed and not the way you do it, but when you are prepping to play her, what is the very first thing you find, the first thing you nail that makes you think, “I am on the right track?” But then I also want to know, what’s the last piece of her you found, the thing that made you think, “I have a full version of her to bring to screen now?”

MULLIGAN: Oh, gosh. She’s a real person. I’ve played a couple of real people, but her children are all in their 60s. They were really involved, and so supportive. I also went to Santiago, Chile and met her wider family, so there was just a lot of feeling of the family being very much on our side and helping us, and wanting to give us as much as they could. But that’s also, you know, you’re telling someone’s whole life.

Her voice was really key, I think. There’s these amazing tapes of her speaking. She’s interviewed by John Gruen, who wrote a book called The Private World of Leonard Bernstein. He interviewed Lenny and the family, and in that she talks quite candidly about what it is to be Lenny’s wife, and some of that is in the film and some of it isn’t. I felt like it was such a window into her, and lots of her letters and things like that. So, I think I had her voice on these tapes in my head for, like, four years. I would listen to it instead of a podcast. It was just something I would have in my ears when I was, like, going on the school run or whatever. That was my kind of background music. So, when I could do her voice, I felt like there was that, but I didn’t. I think halfway through the shoot, we were still learning stuff that went into it.

When you do so much research and you have the opportunity to spend so much time with people who knew her, is there anything in particular you learned that we don’t see or hear about directly in the movie, but you held tight to it and now we can feel it influencing your performance?

MULLIGAN: Well, you’re not gonna know. It will make no difference to you at all, but I’ll tell you anyway. So she was a painter, as well, and got much more into painting when she sort of moved away from acting. It became something that she really loved and she was a very good painter, and her paintings are all over the house in Fairfield, which we filmed in, which is their house, and they’re all over her home in Santiago, Chile where her family lived. There was in the script at one point a huge section where she painted and was frustrated with the painting, and it was a lot to do with what her artistry became when she decided to move away from acting, or moved away from acting, whether that was a decision or not. And I hadn’t painted since I was about five years old, so I went and had painting lessons for about three months in LA and then came to Bradley, and was like, “I can paint now!” And then he was like, “That’s not in the film anymore.” [Laughs] But anyway, I now can sort of vaguely paint, which is fun.

There was so much about her that fascinated me. It was these two artists living side-by-side, one of whom was an artist and the other who was an artist that was touched by God, that everyone heralded as a voice of his generation, an icon, and what must that be like? And Steven Spielberg, who’s a producer on this film, said to Bradley early on something I thought was so poignant; he said, “Felicia made Lenny her art.” That idea of artistry and what her artistic contribution was going to be to the world was something that really fascinated me, and the painting was sort of a part of that.

You feel that so much while you’re watching it. Also, now I feel like you should pursue a role where you play a painter. Put those skills to use!

MULLIGAN: I’ve done it, and I’m not very good. [Laughs]

Just for fun, if you could learn a new skill or about a different profession for a role, what would you choose and why?

MULLIGAN: Oh, I don’t know. Scuba diving, or something!

I’ll take that. I’ll wait eagerly for that movie next.

Of course I want to ask you about working with Bradley. You’ve worked with a number of exceptional directors at this point. Do you notice any shared traits among the directing greats? But then also, can you tell us something that’s one-of-a-kind about Bradley as a director?

MULLIGAN: Well, I’ve also been lucky enough to work with some directors who are also actors. So, Paul Dano, who didn’t act in the film but he directed me; Emerald Fennell, who’s an actress who directed Promising Young Woman and Saltburn. I mean, I’ve worked with brilliant directors who don’t act who equally have an amazing understanding of how actors work, but I do think there’s something kind of wonderful, particularly in a moment where you have sort of an irrational block. I think sometimes actors are very good at identifying that and getting you out of it, and all of those three directors could do that.

Bradley, the experience of working with him on this was so interesting because he did something where he made the crew feel like a part of the company. He did everything he could to remove the artifice from filmmaking. So when you arrived on set, there was no shouting action, there was nothing kind of technical. The crew was sort of part of the scene. So if there’s a scene in the film where you can’t see Bradley’s face, like in the doctor’s office when she receives the diagnosis, there’s moments where you can’t see his mouth, and in those moments, he’s talking to the dolly grip, [John] Mang, and he’s telling Mang to get closer in with the camera because he wanted to shoot so many things in oners. Or, often he’ll be directing the crew whilst he’s in the scene with us, but there was nothing distracting about it. In fact, it felt sort of more cohesive. It felt like part of the story in a really interesting way. So yeah, he would do that, and I just don’t know how his brain works like that.

That’s a very effective approach right there, and the oners serve the movie and the story so well.

Carey Mulligan Pinpoints What Sets Bradley Cooper Apart as a Director

How about in terms of working with him as an actor’s director? I’ve heard you talk about this before and I found it fascinating. You were explaining how, when he was acting in a scene with you, he would direct you via his performance. He would make performance choices to spark different choices in you. Can you give us an example of a time when that happened?

MULLIGAN: He’d obviously give notes sometimes, but he would also direct by the way that he played the scene. So, the Thanksgiving Day fight scene, we did three takes of that scene and the first two takes were a fight but that had no crescendo. It was just kind of weird, bitter — both of us knew that it didn’t feel the right way. I can’t remember if he had the milk carton in the first two takes, but on the third take he walks in with this milk carton and his sunglasses on and he didn’t take them off, and it just annoyed me so much, and there was something about the way he bumped into the furniture. All of that stuff he didn’t do on the previous take, and it was just so much more irritating. Then that take was the only take where I stood in the window. It was the only take where I moved towards him at the end of the scene. But what’s also amazing about that is that in the previous two takes, I’d stayed sat in the armchair for the entire thing because the fight didn’t take off in the same way, but at this point in this one, I moved towards him. Then there’s that pause at the end of the fight, and I thought, “Well, there’s no more words, so I’ll just stand here,” because I knew he was not cutting. He often would let things roll, but I didn’t know what he was waiting for, and then he responded to a voice that I couldn’t hear because there was no one there. He was talking to the children, who he then added in later, and then he allowed for just the amount of time that it would take for a big float of Snoopy to go past the window that was added in later on green screen, and then the scene ended. He did all of that live just in that scene. He didn’t think, like, “1…2…3,” he just timed it out in his head. I didn’t know what we were waiting for the whole time. I was like, “I don’t know…” [Laughs] But that’s the level of…I don’t know how he did it, basically, is the point of that story.

I feel like something like that could answer this question, but I’ve heard you talk about how Felicia watches Leonard and how you’ve been able to watch Bradley, that it mirrors each other in a sense. You said, “There were lots of swells of pride you had watching him,” which filled my heart. Can you give us a couple of examples of times when you were watching him work that filled you with that great pride?

MULLIGAN: All the time. I mean, I just think it was just such a massive swing. I remember the first day I walked on set, I wasn’t shooting, I came to see what they were doing. We were at Tanglewood and I wanted to come and just see and meet people, and he was 80-year-old Lenny conducting William. That was the first scene he shot in the entire film, and that’s one of the last scenes in the film. First of all, I thought, “Shit, I’m gonna have to really up my game,” but secondly, I just thought, “Wow, it’s so huge what he’s attempting to do,” and he was successfully doing it on day one, and that was what was so kind of awe-inspiring. But that went the whole way through. But the thing that really got me was, so we shot most of the film in New York and then we had a couple of months off and then we shot Ely Cathedral, which is that six-minute thing, which is incredible.

That’s one of my favorite scenes of the whole damn year!

MULLIGAN: He was, again, Leonard Bernstein — dialect, holding a cigarette. And it’s the London Symphony Orchestra, who are arguably the most serious, terrifying, brilliant, but they’re proper, proper. They don’t fuck around. They’re sitting there looking up at this actor who’s dressed up like Leonard Bernstein, and I just thought, “The nerve of him to do that.” I was nervous and I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to stand there in a dress, but I was like, “Fuck, I hope they believe me.” I’m just in a dress, but I was pretending to be older than I am, and I was intimidated by them just as an actor, let alone doing anything musical. So I thought that was a massive thing, and he spent all day thinking that he hadn’t got it right. I think probably by, like, very, very high musical standards, he hadn’t got it right, but to a layman or to basically 90% of the room it looked amazing, but he wasn’t happy. Then he constructed this shot that’s in the film and he did it, and in that take, I was genuinely just so proud of him.

I watch a scene like that and I hear him talk about it too, and I just think to myself, “Oh, he must be a perfectionist as an artist.” But then I read a quote, Matthew Libatique had said this, he was talking about working with Bradley and he says, “When you do, you have to be open because things could change, and they always change for the better.” Can you give us an example of a scene where you all went in with a plan, something changed and offered something new, and it made a scene even better?

MULLIGAN: The thing I think we had more was that we would just invent scenes. So there’s a scene where we’re sitting by the swimming pool and we’re sort of disagreeing about Tommy, but it’s shot from very far away and you can’t really see us. So Bradley and I were sitting there that day and we were setting up to shoot something else and we were talking about whatever we had been doing, and he said, “We should just shoot this conversation right here. Let’s just shoot this.” And he went and set it up, and I just stayed there. My iPhone was sitting [there], which is very unprofessional, but I wasn’t thinking we were filming anything, and I said, “Should I move this?” He said, “No.” I said, “Should I take my hat off?” He was like, “Nah, fuck it. Let’s just do it.” And we shot that. We improvised that scene, and then he cut, and he was like, “Move on.” And I was like, “That’ll never be in the film,” but it was! It was like that kind of liveness that made it so fun because it was like putting a collage together. I didn’t ever know what was going to be eventually in the film, but we were always just inventing.

Going into filming, of all the ambitious scenes in this movie, which one did you think would be most challenging for you to pull off and then ultimately, was that indeed the most challenging or did a different one catch you by surprise?

MULLIGAN: I thought everything from when she was unwell at the end was going to be the most challenging, but it wasn’t. The scene talking to Shirley in the diner where she’s telling the story about the date that goes wrong was the most challenging. I think it was because it was one of the few scenes where Bradley wasn’t Lenny, and I had gotten so used to just acting with him. I loved acting with Sarah Silverman, she was so brilliant, but I just suddenly got…And it was also a scene that when I read it, and this often happens, I thought, “That’s such good writing,” and then I thought about it a lot, and then I thought, “Oh, I’m going to completely fuck it up on the day.” I got to it and I did. I got stuck in my own head, but Bradley was just incredible. That was probably harder than anything else.

Because you brought up Sarah, I’ll touch on the ensemble next. Can you name a time when a scene partner gave you just what you needed to either crush a tough scene or perhaps even find something in Felicia that you might not have been able to access without them?

MULLIGAN: Sarah was definitely in that scene in Palm Court. Because earlier on in the film Shirley had been so kind of eccentric and loud, and kind of imposing, and then suddenly in that scene, which we would say is probably 25, 30 years later, there’s so much about Shirley that’s bedded in and grounded. She’s aged, and you can see that they formed a relationship. She just listened so effectively, which I think is a completely underrated skill from an actor, that you just are able to listen. She was just an open vessel of listening the whole scene, and I found it was just incredible to act with.

I’m gonna reference one particular scene that I love and ask you a personal career question using it. It’s the moment when they’re having lunch and someone essentially says to Leonard, “You should change your last name. The music that you want to pursue, it’s not serious music. » But then she tells him that’s the kind of work she wants to see. She wants him to share it with her. Who is the Felicia in your career, the person who, at just the right time, told you, “Pursue what you want, even if other people tell you it’s silly or you shouldn’t do it?”

MULLIGAN: Well, my agent who’s been my agent for 20 years, she told me, just after An Education, she said, basically, “You’ve got a very brief and privileged window where you will be asked to do things, and in that time you should only take things that you can’t bear the idea of anybody else doing, and that you should just follow that to the letter.” And she’s never pursued anything other than good work, and been supportive of that, so that’s meant theater and independent film for the most part, and then jobs like this, which I would have gone through Squid Game to get to get this job. [Laughs]

I hear they’re casting Season 2. You can sign up.

MULLIGAN: Oh, genuinely!

Make your painter movie and then do Squid Game: The Challenge.

MULLIGAN: I would just want to be in the reality show.

How would you do? Which game would you lose on?

MULLIGAN: I’m not good at the licking the biscuit thing. I’d love it, but I don’t think I’d be good at it.

I respect that. I wouldn’t lose at any of the games. I would lose at living in the dorm. I couldn’t handle that.

MULLIGAN: No, I wouldn’t like that either.

This Memorable ‘Maestro’ Scene Was Inspired by Carey Mulligan’s Childhood

Alright, I have to ask just one last question. This is my favorite question. Nobody likes it, but I don’t care because I think it’s important.

MULLIGAN: Oh, god.

A lot of people in this industry give awards to each other, and that’s wonderful, but no one says « good job » to themselves nearly enough. I want you to pinpoint something you did in Maestro that you think you’ll be able to look back on and say to yourself, “Damn, I’m proud of what I did there.”

MULLIGAN: Oh! Fuck.

I’m so used to this reaction now.

MULLIGAN: So there’s a bit at the beginning of the film where we’re sitting back-to-back, and the day that we shot that, Bradley said, “I’m gonna do this big crane thing, and it’s gonna come in on us and we’re gonna be sitting back-to-back, and I want you to think of a game that we can play.” It was my first day of shooting, and I was like, “He’s challenging me. The director’s challenging me.” Anyway, I thought of this game and it was a game that my brother and I played when we were kids where we would sit across the table from one another and hold hands, both hands, and look in the eye, and we would try and see if we had a psychic connection. We would try and send each other a number between one and 20, and so I’d look in his eyes and then he would try and guess. And anyway, for years we thought we had a psychic connection, but that was the game. So yes, I put that in the film for my brother.

That’s a great answer! That’s an extremely memorable element of the film. You should be proud of that!

Maestro is available to stream on Netflix.

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