Maestro may be considered by most a biopic of Leonard Bernstein‘s life, but star Carey Mulligan disagrees.
“It’s not,” she told Vogue in her November cover story. “It’s a movie about a marriage — a very complicated marriage.”
The Netflix film tells the story of Leonard (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre’s (Mulligan) love story over the course of 30 years, from the day they met at a party in 1946 through two engagements, a 25-year marriage and three children. Cooper pulls triple duty as the project’s director and co-writer.
“Their connection was profound,” Mulligan said. “They lit each other up. You can hear it: There are tapes of them trading anecdotes and it’s like they’re dancing.”
The couple had an arrangement that may have seemed unorthodox to some. She accepted his affairs but only to a certain point. “For her, the betrayal wasn’t sex,” the Oscar-winning actress explained of Felicia. “It was when she felt someone else intruding into the space she held for him, being the person who understood him, who was necessary.”
While on the surface, Mulligan’s life could resemble Felicia — both actresses married to musicians with three children — the Promising Young Woman star noted that it was different for Felicia because everything revolved around her husband.
“There was a lot of ‘What if?’ with her character,” she said. “What if she hadn’t given up acting? When I listened to tapes of her being interviewed, it seemed like she wasn’t sure how far she’d have gone — that she felt like, maybe she didn’t have it in her to be great. But on the other hand, she never got the chance to find out.”
Mulligan reflected on her preparation for the film, noting it was the most intense prep she’s ever done for a project. In addition to the technical stuff, like Felicia’s accent and bearing, it was essential for her and Cooper to tap into Felicia and Leonard’s connection. The actors went as far as attending a five-day “dream workshop” to use their dreams to connect their subconscious to the characters’.
“I knew her ability,” Cooper told the publication ahead of the actors strike about Mulligan’s take on Felicia. “All I asked of her was to please do the prep with me; I said, ‘Will you go down this road where we’re basically going to bare our souls to each other?’ And she was like, ‘OK, let’s do it, I’m game.’”
The She Said actress also pointed out that there are several ways to tell Leonard Berstein’s story, and in a version, Felicia could have been a side character with only one or two scenes throughout the entire film. Maestro isn’t like that. It tells the story of what they created together, showing that the famed conductor really “needed her.”
Elsewhere in the cover story, Mulligan got candid about how she chooses the roles she takes on and admitted she’s “terribly unstrategic.”
“It’s really all about the script — and a part where I don’t know exactly how I’d do it. I think,” she said, explaining that’s part of the reason why she has no interest in launching a production company as several actors of her caliber have. “I’d know too much,” she said. “I really prefer for a great project to hit me like a comet.”
Maestro hits theaters Nov. 20 and will be available to stream on Netflix Dec. 20.