Bradley Cooper says filming his nude scene in Nightmare Alley was “pretty heavy.”
The acclaimed actor stars as carny-turned-mentalist Stanton Carlisle in Guillermo del Torro’s psychological thriller. Speaking on KCRW’s The Business podcast, Cooper described one particularly challenging day on set, which also happened to be his first time appearing fully nude on camera.
Cooper recalls: “I remember reading in the script and thinking, he’s a pickled punk in that bathtub and it’s to story. You have to do it.
“I can still remember that day just to be naked in front of the crew for six hours, and it was Toni Collette’s first day. It was just like, ‘Whoa’. It was pretty heavy.”
The A Star Is Born actor also explained why he was immediately on board with the bathtub scene. “There was nothing gratuitous about it,” he said. “It was to story.”
Related: Full-frontal male nudity could soon have its big, big moment
“The content of what the movie is, what we were exploring, in order to do it in a real way, it demanded that we’d be naked emotionally and soulfully,” he added.
Speaking more generally about making the film, Cooper said: “It really is akin to putting on a miner’s kit, hat and flashlight, and looking at each other and then going down in the tunnel, knowing that you may be excavating a route that won’t ever get you to the end that day but you come back up and go down again the next day.”
Cooper previously told Deadline that playing Carlisle “terrified me, for many reasons.”
“It was important to go there, unflinchingly and boldly, which I was able to do with Guillermo hand-in-hand. It cost something for us emotionally, making this movie. It was very risky to go to these places of, ‘Are we this person? Is this a side of ourselves? Is this who we really are?'”
“I found that to be quite vulnerable as an actor,” he added. “All my characters tend to linger, but this one, I have to say, was an especially hard one.”
John
Is “to story” a typo or a phase I never heard of? It’s there twice in the article.
MISTERJETT
so anyway………….
nm4047
yes it is correct reference. to scrip, to point, etc etc.
CatholicXXX
prosthetic.
BrokebackBob
Please, please, before you see the new remake of Nightmare Alley, see the original with Tyrone Power. The remake is yet another failed attempt to recreate a classic. I had quite a bit of respect for Cate and Bradley but this really set the amount much lower. Film goers are basically staying away in droves because word of mouth says it’s really a hot mess of a film.
djhavyk
Yeah, but…BRADLEY COOPER NAKED…uhm, how can we NOT watch?!?! O.o
G R
I was SO excited for this film, despite some terrific (although constantly dreary) cinematography, the film is a complete mess. Convoluted, some major plot holes and the entire film never came together. But the set/production design was amazing!
Imjustsaying
‘The remake is yet another failed attempt to recreate a classic.”
Yeah, well saying the first is a classic doesn’t mean it is. Most people have never heard of it or even aware this is a remake. Even Ben Mankiewicz made it a point before AND after the TMC presentation last month to say how much of a box office bomb it was.
tjack47
Damn! The Tyrone Power, Nightmare Alley, was on TCM, and I didn’t record it. I wondered about this one, because was overly hyped. It wouldn’t hurt my eyes to see, Mr. Cooper’s penis. I like penises a great deal. I’ll see it streaming somewhere, and then I’ll judge for myself, the film not the penis.
Ken A.
Note: They did not interview Bradley Cooper, they read other articles and just wrote an expose from the information they gathered from those periodicals.
Bromancer7
How much you wanna bet we either don’t actually see his winkle. Or if we do it’s fake. Just because he was naked doesn’t mean we actually see it.
SPEEDOSWIMMER
THIRSTY…
gabbym
I saw the film and remember the scene but unfortunately dont remember seeing any penis.
And I agree, the original is way better.
Doug
I also saw it a couple of weeks ago. There was a bathtub scene but I don’t remember seeing it either.
Openminded
Was Cooper being cute with his last statement in this article about frontal nudity, “this was an especially hard one”.
inbama
FYI: “Nightmare Alley” 1947 starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell streams on HULU.
BigE
I caught this at the theater a couple weeks ago back to back with Encanto. Two completely different films, each with a character named Bruno. I thought it was very entertaining, which is my main reason to go to the movies, and Cate and Bradley looked like they were having a lot of fun performing. If there was a full-frontal, it was of the “if you blinked, you missed it ” variety, like young Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves.
Jim
Ah, he showed his junk big deal!
Oh wait talking about it ’causes buzz a box-office. I get it now.
Man About Town
When he says “It was just like, ‘Whoa’. It was pretty heavy” are we supposed to know what he means?
nitejonboy
Well, I loved the film…but like others, I do not remember seeing any penis in that scene, and I would remember that for sure! I don’t get why so many are hating on the film, it’s not perfect, but it’s a great bit of film noir fun and Cooper is amazing in it, as are the rest of the cast.