After receiving critical acclaim for his directorial debut, A Star Is Born, in 2018, actor Bradley Cooper is currently promoting the second movie that he both directed and starred in, Maestro.
Speaking to Spike Lee for Variety’s Directors on Directors series, Bradley explained that he doesn’t have any chairs on set because he believes they cause “energy dips.”
He said: “When I direct, I don’t watch playback. There’s no chairs. I’ve always hated chairs on sets; your energy dips the minute you sit down in a chair.”
And while Bradley clearly has respect for the hierarchy of a movie set, many were left disappointed by the expectations that he has of his cast and crew when he is the one at the top.
Others pointed out that in the video footage of the interview, Bradley does joke about sitting on “apple boxes” instead of a chair — suggesting that sitting down isn’t banned in its entirety.
Interestingly, Bradley isn’t the first director to be caught up in “chairs on set” discourse, with Christopher Nolan facing similar backlash in 2020 when Anne Hathaway told Variety: “Chris also doesn’t allow chairs and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working.”
And chair-gate isn’t the only controversy that Bradley has faced when it comes to Maestro, with the star also being heavily criticized for his choice to wear a large prosthetic nose when playing the Jewish composer.
