Bradley Cooper caused an online uproar among some Republicans during the Democratic national convention after being spotted by TV cameras listening to speeches last Wednesday evening, when Barack Obama spoke. The apparent reason: he played the highly decorated Navy Seal Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, a major (and rare) Hollywood hit among conservatives.
The four-time Oscar nominee (he was nominated for American Sniper) claimed on The Late Late Show on Tuesday night that he had simply attended to hear Obama’s address.
“To be there, it was probably one of the last times we’ll hear him speak,” Cooper said of Obama. “I think he was an incredible president. I was really excited.”
The actor didn’t tell host James Corden who he’d be voting for in November, but Cooper did notably donate funds to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2008. He has also been an outspoken advocate of Obamacare as well as the president’s gun control initiatives, and played a key role in arranging Obama’s 2014 appearance on Zach Galifianakis’s deadpan web series Between Two Ferns.
As for the barrage of incensed tweets from Republican fans of the actor, Cooper said: “I was not expecting that.”
“Republicans were up in arms that I was there watching the president speak,” he added.
Corden’s other guest, Todd Phillips, who directed Cooper in The Hangover trilogy and the upcoming comedy War Dogs, likened the backlash to a “mob being mad at [Robert] De Niro for being in The Intern”.
