Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan of ‘Maestro’ Take Center Stage on the Cover of 'Queue' Issue 15

As the year 2023 comes to a close, Queue Issue 15 arrives, with two of the stars behind one of the year’s most anticipated films — Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan of Maestro — gracing its cover.

Directed, co-written, and produced by Cooper, Maestro is a masterful and moving look at the sprawling love story of conductor, educator, and composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, the actor and artist Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Exploring both the legendary figure’s public and private lives, Cooper as Leonard and Mulligan as Felicia delve into the couple’s trials and triumphs to present a raw, honest portrait of a complex marriage. “I wanted to dedicate the real estate of the film to them,” Cooper tells Queue in our Issue 15 cover story. “I wanted to make a movie about these two because that’s frankly what I found encapsulated everything.” As both filmmaker and star, Cooper fully captures Leonard and his passion for life, music, love, and art, and Mulligan finds her richest role to date. “It was just the most exciting role and felt akin to some of the roles that I’ve been privileged to play onstage but had not found the equivalent of onscreen,” says Mulligan. 

Another astonishingly moving portrait of a marriage between tremendously gifted people is the new documentary American Symphony, which centers on the shared emotional journey of highly decorated musician Jon Batiste and best-selling author and journalist Suleika Jaouad. As Batiste receives a record 11 Grammy nominations and begins composing a genre-bending symphony, his partner Jaouad learns her cancer, which had been in remission for 10 years, has returned. Photographed in the pages of Issue 15 by Micaiah Carter, the two creatives join the documentary’s director Matthew Heineman in looking back on their film’s emotional journey. “[It] felt like a valuable story to put out into the world, and I was willing to do it, but only if we could really do it with the most unvarnished vulnerability and honesty that we could muster,” remarks Jaouad. 

The year’s end also marks the conclusion of The Crown after six absorbing seasons. With the drama’s final episodes, newcomers Ed McVey, Meg Bellamy, and Luther Ford join the series’ ensemble as Prince William, Kate Middleton, and the teenage Prince Harry, respectively. Queue spent time with the promising young stars playing the next-gen royals to learn how they approached their career-making turns.

Our latest print edition also features a special section celebrating talent behind the camera, with an in-depth look at the brilliant below-the-line artists who’ve helped conjure some of the year’s most outstanding cinematic moments. From cinematography to production design to makeup and hairstyling — plus editing, song, and score — Queue reveals the secrets behind the year’s most captivating films, including Maestro, May December, Rustin, NYAD, The Killer, and El Conde.

You can head to the Netflix shop and order the latest issue of Queue to sample these stories and much, much more.

All interviews in this issue were captured in accordance with guild guidelines.