On Set With Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and More

Go behind the scenes with some of the year’s most celebrated Oscar contenders.

December 6, 2023

MAESTRO (Netflix)

The production of Maestro relocated to England’s Ely Cathedral for a sequence late in the film, re-creating conductor Leonard Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection. Cowriter, director, and star Bradley Cooper studied with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (seated).

Searchlight Pictures.

POOR THINGS (Searchlight Pictures)

Reuniting with The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone calls Poor Things’ Bella Baxter “my very favorite character I’ve ever gotten to play.” A woman resurrected and given the brain of an infant, Bella is “so interested in the world, and she’s full of life and passion and curiosity,” says Stone.

François Duhamel/Netflix.

MAY DECEMBER (Netflix)

Director Todd Haynes worked with Charles Melton for the first time and with Julianne Moore for the fourth time for this story of an extremely unconventional marriage. In scenes between them like this one, he says, “there’s a sense of instability that’s being unleashed.”

Apple Original Films.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)

Lily Gladstone, with costars Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, wears a traditional Osage wedding coat in this scene of her character Mollie’s wedding to DiCaprio’s Ernest. Costume designer Jacqueline West calls it “Regency meets Native America. It looked so unique and so over the top almost, it was like putting Marie Antoinette into a horse opera.”

Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.

BARBIE (Warner Bros.)

Director Greta Gerwig took inspiration from classic Hollywood musicals like Oklahoma! and Singin’ in the Rain for the multiple musical numbers in Barbie. The studio questioned them at one point, she admits. “There was some of that. Some ‘You need what? Why do we need a dream ballet here?’ I was like, ‘Because it will be a delight.’ ”

Parrish Lewis/Netflix.

RUSTIN (Netflix)

Playing his first lead film role after decades as an actor, Colman Domingo (center, with Aml Ameen and director George C. Wolfe) knew his mission was to “be the soul of the production.... I knew it was my charge to empower every single person on that set.”

Eli Ade/Warner Bros.

THE COLOR PURPLE (Warner Bros.)

American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino played Celie in The Color Purple on Broadway but had to be persuaded to reprise the role onscreen. “She was very, very hesitant to do it, because it’s heavy work—it weighs down on the artists,“ the film’s director, Blitz Bazawule, has said. This scene, a fantasy sequence between Celie and Taraji P. Henson’s Shug Avery, helped convince her, according to the director. “I said, ‘We’ll have a 50-piece orchestra. It’s going to be wild.’ ”

Kimberley French/Netflix.

NYAD (Netflix)

Screenwriter Julia Cox credits the “tenacity and athleticism of Annette Bening” for helping the entire crew push through the physical challenges of filming Nyad, much of it on the open ocean. Bening trained for over a year to play the distance swimmer Diana Nyad and continued training even as filming began. Says Cox,“What she had to do physically, on top of what she brought as an artist and a human being to all the sensitive work, was unbelievable.“