Bradley Cooper’s new movie is filming in Mass., and it needs extras

"Maestro" will film for a week in Western Mass. ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

Award winner Bradley Cooper stopped for photos on the red carpet. Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press

April 19, 2022

Actor Bradley Cooper is directing a new movie, and he needs extras for a week of filming set to take place in Massachusetts next month.

“Maestro,” Cooper’s first directorial effort since the Oscar-winning “A Star is Born,” is a biopic of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein, starring Cooper in the lead role. Fittingly, filming will take place at Tanglewood, the Western Massachusetts music venue that has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937.

According to a listing posted by the New York-based Grant Wilfley Casting Inc., the film is seeking men and women with “natural hair color” to play extras for scenes set in both the 1940s and 1980s.

For scenes set in the 1940s, men hoping to be cast may not have crew cuts, and “must be comfortable receiving a period haircut” for filming, while women should have above-shoulder length. For scenes set in the 1980s, meanwhile, casting agents would like men with “longer/shaggy hair” and women with hair of all lengths.

Bernstein has a long history with Tanglewood, which was home to some of the most transformative moments of his storied career. The “West Side Story” composer studied conducting under BSO music director Serge Koussevitzky in the 1940s, later becoming his mentor’s conducting assistant. He conducted his first opera there in 1946, and took over as the head of the orchestra following Koussevitzky’s death in 1951.

Throughout his life, Bernstein returned to Tanglewood on a yearly basis for five decades to teach a new generation of students at the Tanglewood Musical Center.

Along with Cooper, “Maestro” is set to star Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, while Matt Bomer (“Magic Mike”) is in talks to play one of Bernstein’s lovers, according to Variety.