Bradley Cooper Oscars Joke Goes Viral After Snub

Bradley Cooper’s Best Actor loss at Sunday’s 96th Academy Awards has been made light of with a viral meme on social media, as the actor and filmmaker’s streak of bad Oscars luck continues.

Cooper was nominated in the category for his lead turn in the critically acclaimed Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which he also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced. However, he missed out on the night to Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy for his role as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had a pivotal role in developing the first nuclear weapons.

The loss marked an unfavorable streak for Cooper, who had nine consecutive Oscar losses going into this year’s ceremony. He has previously missed out on Best Actor trophies for Silver Linings Playbook, American Sniper, and A Star is Born. He also has a Best Supporting Actor loss for American Hustle.

As a producer, Cooper has also walked away empty-handed in the Best Picture category for Joker, Nightmare Alley, American Sniper, and A Star Is Born. As with Netflix movie Maestro, Cooper has not yet received a Best Director Oscar nod. On Sunday, Cooper missed out as a producer in the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay categories, bringing his tally up to 12-0.

Focusing on Cooper’s Best Actor loss, a meme was shared on X, formerly Twitter that poked fun at the star having a potentially awkward run-in with victor Murphy.

The video clip in question showed Jack Quaid’s vigilante character Hughie Campbell from TV show The Boys awkwardly running into Antony Starr’s Homelander on a red carpet.

“Cillian Murphy bumping into a very sour Bradley Cooper at the Oscars after party tonight,” read a tongue-in-cheek caption on the post, which, as of press time, has been viewed more than 341,000 times.

Cooper’s Maestro, which debuted on Netflix in December, largely follows Bernstein away from the world of his career, shining a light on his marriage to Costa Rican-born actress Felicia Montealegre, portrayed by Carey Mulligan.

Producer Kristie Macosko Krieger previously told Newsweek that Cooper was quite the marvel to watch and a rewarding challenge to work with on the movie—particularly because the multi-hyphenate star had set such high standards when it came to the production.

“Bradley didn’t make it an easy situation for us,” Krieger said with a laugh. “He wanted to shoot the movie in the hallowed halls where Lenny and Felicia lived their lives. So he wanted to shoot a tango, he wanted to shoot at Carnegie Hall, he wanted to shoot in Ely Cathedral, he wanted to shoot at The Plaza, he wanted to shoot in Central Park. He wanted to shoot in the Dakota [apartment building], but we couldn’t shoot in the Dakota, so we had to build the Dakota to look exactly like their apartment did.

“And so making [Maestro] in the real spaces, he wanted to shoot live music; he wanted to shoot on film,” Krieger added. “These are all things that were non-negotiable for him. And he wanted to shoot with the prosthetic makeup and he wanted to shoot it over five decades. So, like, all of those things made it like the triple Salchow to accomplish. It was not an easy film to make.”

However, Krieger said “it was the right way to make the film. And he knew that that was exactly what we should do. And that was the way to tell the story of their lives.”