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How Danielle Deadwyler, John David Washington, and Malcolm Washington Found Harmony in The Piano Lesson
November 28, 2024
August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play The Piano Lesson gets the big screen treatment in Malcolm Washington’s feature directorial debut. The film, which played at TIFF earlier this fall, stars his brother John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, and Samuel L. Jackson, and is produced by his dad, Denzel Washington. (Mom Pauletta Washington even has a cameo.)
The Piano Lesson, which is now playing on Netflix, follows a family clash over an heirloom piano as the battle begins between brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and sister Berniece (Deadwyler). One hopes to sell it, the other refuses to give it up, thereby revealing haunting truths about how the past is perceived and who defines a family legacy.
Malcolm honors the legacy of Wilson’s work while infusing his own unique perspective, crafting something that will invites many different interpretations. “This is what we set out to do. We set out to kick the door down,” Malcolm said in an interview. “We set out to break barriers and form, and deal with metaphysics and spirituality and a loose narrative structure and music. And tie all of these things together in some way that I hadn’t seen in this context before.”
John David believes this film will do that and hopes to see a conversation ensue. “This is what film can do. I’m curious to know what they’re gonna think overseas and how they’ll understand and interpret the language,” he said in the same interview alongside Deadwyler. “I like conversations that can spark and when a film does that, you see the power of it.”
Malcolm added, “ We all come from a culture. We all have families. We all are tied to something bigger than ourselves. Those themes are so resonant anywhere you go in the world and that’s what I want [audiences] to take: putting yourself in that line that precedes you infinitely.”
The Washingtons and Deadwyler showed a deep appreciation for the richness and complexity of Wilson’s writing. The actors highlighted the “lyrical” quality of the dialogue, the musical “bars” and the “beautiful underlying things” that Wilson weaves into the narrative. The filmmaker and actors hope to introduce new audiences to the depth and artistry of Wilson’s work.
Deadwyler seems to have a nuanced understanding of Berniece’s internal struggles and the ways in which her character’s past and the weight of history manifest in her present-day experiences. The actress embraced the challenge of portraying a woman who is both grounded in the realities of her circumstances and deeply connected to the metaphysical and spiritual realms. As she eloquently put it, “You cannot evade what wants to have you.” Her words underscore the richness of Wilson’s writing, which seamlessly weaves together themes of family, identity and the legacy of slavery.
Read more from my interview with The Piano Lesson cast:
Their first thoughts on reading August Wilson’s play
Malcolm: My first thought in reading it was just how visual it was and how it there were ideas in there that dealt with the metaphysical, the spiritual, the mystical, and all of these really interesting themes. I was very curious about how to how to put them all together into a film. I mean, I immediately thought about a film when I read it.
When I first started working on it, I was putting my idea of what the movie could look like and feel like and sound like [onto it]. I made this deck, like a book of images that I took to John David first. In it I had my musings on tone, my musings on afro-surrealism, the parchment farm—certain concepts I was interested in exploring, and things that don’t necessarily translate to, ‘Oh, this scene will be like that.’ But it was a vibe for the whole thing and where I’m reaching from historically, in the context of African American art and Black spirituality, all these themes that we’ve been touching on.”
Danielle: I kept thinking about gender a lot as Berniece is the only adult woman in the play. I remember us talking about how she mothers and how she protects [her daughter] Maretha as a girl child amongst men and spirituality is a major component of how Berniece is navigating the world. I’m focused on gender because it’s so glaring, but also there are these beautiful underlying things that are rummaging and we got into that a lot.
John David: The words, the back and forth, the brother-sister dynamic, the uncles’ dynamic, the lineage, how all the relationships are woven into the African American experience, in the South, and slavery and the underbelly of our country, and how tastefully it was done–there’s miracles in it. Ultimately, I saw the love in it, and I got very excited. But it was the words first—like, he’s August Wilson. Lyrical. He’s got bars, as they say.
On working with each other:
John David: Working with Danielle, I saw an invitation to be vulnerable, to take chances, to fall, to be my best self. As an artist, I saw an invitation to be the actor I’m trying to be and she does that with grace, with humility, with inclusive nature. I think we’re seeing a great performance and she has this ability to make it look like she’ll know what the hell she’s doing.
Danielle: They’re both really beautiful, honourable men. They’re dedicated to the work, even when I joust them and pick on them. I mean when you’re all just deeply serious and dedicated to constructing and architecting something that is deeply family oriented, community oriented… That’s what this play is about, and I believe that’s the way in which they’ve led the making of the work. There’s no other way to be loved and moved through something that needs to be mirrored more often and I would make anything with them any day.
Malcolm: I got to just add, it was so beautiful watching them work together. So much of the movie is just carried on their shoulders, and the way that they were so generous to the other person and always gave their 100 percent.
On how their characters bring about different ways of dealing with the past:
Danielle: Of course, the past is confronting all of us. We try to evade it, even though we allow altars to exist in the form of the piano. But if you don’t engage with it, how are you holding it? That’s what’s at hand. How are we leading ourselves towards who we’re to become based on what was? And are we teaching those who are coming after us how to hold and handle it? You can understand that from a very present tense point where history is and particularly Black American history is being withheld in a certain way in the American education systems in certain states. Attacking the residual effects of [Wilson’s] works that were created in past decades are that much more palpable right now for us to say we need to confront that. That’s the biggest thing, or one of the larger things, that I think about in this work. Berniece, because she’s not dealing with it, it comes to her in the form of dreams in this work. It comes to her in the form of spirit and apparition. It comes to her in the form of echoing in her own daily consciousness, right? You cannot evade what wants to have you. That’s heavy, heavy thoughts.
