Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association
Bradley Cooper and his Maestro costar Carey Mulligan’s first meeting was pretty “dramatic,” to say the least.
“Carey was in a one-woman show, and I went backstage to meet her and realized something was not right and I insisted on taking her to the emergency room,” Cooper, 49, explained on a Friday, January 26, episode of The Graham Norton Show.
Mulligan, 38, chimed in and noted that during her performance, “a bit of set” hit her in the head.
“I carried on but when it was over, I started crying and thought I was a goner,” she shared. “I was sobbing on the floor when Bradley turned up and, realizing I wasn’t OK, he took me to the hospital. You can imagine how delighted the nurse was!”
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Mulligan’s stage mishap is also not the only medical incident Cooper has witnessed since the duo became friends and colleagues. The Saltburn actress revealed that she fell ill while on the Maestro set, and the doctor didn’t believe she was pregnant due to the heavy prosthetics she had on.
“I was quite ill on set and a doctor was called to give me antibiotics. When I told him I was 12 weeks pregnant, he was not at all convinced,” Mulligan explained, adding that she didn’t realize she was “still made up to look 57 years old,” thus causing confusion for the doctor. “I couldn’t wait to tell the makeup artists how good they were.”
Cooper and Mulligan starred opposite each other as the American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre, in the critically acclaimed film Maestro, which Cooper also directed and cowrote with Josh Singer. The 2023 movie was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.
Following the success of Maestro, Cooper couldn’t help but gush about his costar Mulligan.
“It was my hope when I started to realize what movie I wanted to write and explore, that there would be an actress that could fulfill that, and then Carey not only fulfilled it, but allowed me to explore cinematically in ways that I wouldn’t know if she wasn’t able to just be, I would say, almost transcendent, so that the camera, that the movie wants to stay on her,” Cooper told Deadline in an interview published on Tuesday, January 23.
Cooper went on to say that Mulligan really “commandeered” her role in the film in the exact way he pictured.