Adrien Brody addresses 'Brutalist' AI controversy, jokes about prosthetic nose

Adrien Brody's most recent film "The Brutalist" is about as far from a comedy as a film can get.

Chronicling the journey of László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant, over several decades, Brody's performance touches on poverty, exploitation and antisemitism.

Filming was not without moments of levity, however, Brody revealed in a recent interview on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." Since the movie spans decades, special effects makeup artists were tasked with aging Brody − only some artists couldn't tell where his face began and the prosthetics ended.

"Everyone's very busy. It's a movie with a lot of moving pieces and so I had a new team of people who I had never met, and they were removing this apparatus all over me," the Oscar-nominated actor recounted. "This woman was busily working away with a solvent on my nose, she's just working away, and I said, 'Are you trying to remove that?' and she said, 'Yes' and I said, 'That doesn't come off.'"

Adrien Brody is back with The Brutalist This time, he's left the 'torment' behind.

Brody confirmed that the makeup artist had apologized for mistaking his real nose for a prosthetic and that she had mentioned plans to write about the moment in her diary.

The anecdote comes as Hollywood faces a growing debate over the use of prosthetics to mimic ethnic features. In 2023's "Maestro," a Leonard Bernstein biopic, Bradley Cooper wore a prosthetic nose − a choice that outraged some viewers who felt it fell into a well-worn trope mocking or exaggerating the size of Jewish peoples' noses.

At the time, Bernstein's children responded with a statement, writing, "It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we're perfectly fine with that."

Others, like actress Sarah Silverman, have chided the move, calling it "Jewface" and criticizing Hollywood for failing to cast Jewish actors in roles portraying them.

Should only Jewish actresses play Jewish roles? Some say Hollywood has a 'Jewface' problem.

Adrien Brody addresses 'Brutalist' AI controversy

Brody's appearance on Fallon is just one part of a larger press tour he is doing to promote the film.

The actor also sat down with Variety for an interview published Tuesday in which he tackled some of the controversy surrounding the film's employment of artificial intelligence technology.

Earlier this month, the film's writer-director Brady Corbet revealed that the Ukrainian AI software company Respeecher had been used to augment Brody and co-star Felicity Jones' brief Hungarian dialogue in the movie.

"It's an extremely unique language. We coached (Brody and Jones) and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference," Corbet told the tech publication Redshark.

The article quickly went viral, with some expressing outrage over the use of a technology that sectors of the art world feel is mildly dangerous at best and livelihood-threatening at worst.

Corbet later backtracked, saying in a statement: "Adrien and Felicity's performances are completely their own," and arguing the use of the technology was merely to speed up post-production on a lower-budget film.

In his interview with Vanity Fair, Brody pushed back against the outcry, saying he was glad Corbet had clarified his comments and that the whole thing had been blown out of proportion.

"I understand that we live in a time where even just the mention of AI is a bit triggering," he told the outlet, "I just wish people had more understanding of the context and facts of the circumstances."

Brody also stood by his performance and reaffirmed the hard work that had gone into making it authentic.

"First of all, I'm the son of Hungarians and grew up with that language spoken in my home. I actually even integrated, within the Hungarian dialogue, curse words that weren't in the script," he said.

Contributing: Patrick Ryan

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Adrien Brody addresses AI controversy: 'AI is a bit triggering'