Bradley Cooper explains why he doesn’t allow chairs on set

Bradley Cooper returns to the director’s chair with his sophomore film Maestro — except he might not actually have a chair at all.

The A Star Is Born actor and filmmaker discussed his process in a conversation with Spike Lee for Variety’s Directors on Directors series, and revealed that you won’t find chairs on sets for films he directs.

“There’s no chairs on sets” Cooper said. “I’ve always hated chairs, and I feel like your energy dips the minute you sit down in the chair. So [an] apple box is a very nice way to sit and everybody’s together. There’s no video village, I hate that.”

Cooper isn’t the only major filmmaker with a supposed no-chairs policy. In 2020, Anne Hathaway claimed Christopher Nolan “doesn’t allow chairs.” She explained “his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working. I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing.”

However, a rep for Nolan later said that Hathaway’s comments were misconstrued. “For the record, the only things banned from [Nolan’s] sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully),” spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak told IndieWire. “The chairs Anne was referring to are the directors chairs clustered around the video monitor, allocated on the basis of hierarchy not physical need. Chris chooses not to use his but has never banned chairs from the set. Cast and crew can sit wherever and whenever they need and frequently do.”

Robert Downey Jr. recently said that there weren’t chairs on the Oppenheimer set. “With Nolan… we were doing screen tests on IMAX, which is crazy,” Downey said. “You would go back and sit in your set chair — no, you wouldn’t, because there were no set chairs!”

With Maestro and Oppenheimer projected as two favorites for awards season, we may see a battle between the chairless directors on Oscar night.

Maestro is now playing in select theaters and hits Netflix Dec. 20. Watch the full interview above.

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