Danielle Deadwyler tried to watch The Piano Lesson when the film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this fall. Though she’d already seen it alone in a screening room, she wanted to sit in with the first audience seeing the film, an adaptation of August Wilson’s 1987 play.
But as the first scene played, Deadwyler found herself starting to get emotional. “I’m watering, I’m welling up. And then it continues and I just [thought], No, no, no, I can’t do it,” she tells Little Gold Men.
Helmed by Malcolm Washington in his directorial debut, The Piano Lesson is a powerful, emotional tale about how one family’s history is carried down through the generations. Deadwyler, who got her start on the stage, has always considered Wilson’s plays to be a significant part of her own journey, having watched his works since her childhood in Atlanta. “August’s work in general has just defined my understanding of the way theater is to be performed,” she says. “This is just the work you want to do, the pivotal work that has the quintessential rhythms of Black culture, of Black language, of Black life.”
Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson centers on Deadwyler’s Berniece Charles, a widowed mother whose brother, Boy Willie Charles (played by John David Washington), comes to visit her home in Pittsburgh. He tries to convince her to sell their family’s piano, but this is no ordinary instrument—it’s a family heirloom that features designs carved by their ancestor, and carries much of the family’s history within it.
Deadwyler, known for starring in the 2022 biopic Till, speaks to Little Gold Men (listen below) about the family heirloom that inspired her on The Piano Lesson, shooting the film’s powerful final scene, and what exactly cicada sex has to do with Hollywood.
Vanity Fair: What is it about The Piano Lesson—the themes or topics it’s trying to explore—that you found most interesting?
Danielle Deadwyler: The root is in Black American art, which was influenced by Romare Bearden’s piece. It is the image of a woman teaching a child, which I think is really what drives August’s understanding of a lot of our experience. He grew up with a single black mother who labored for him and his siblings. That reverence is witnessed in the way that he writes certain Black women characters. The matriarch is the source of so much spiritual working. When we talk about spiritual work, it’s cultural work. It’s the making of Black life, of domestic life, of labor outside of the home. It’s the church. It’s the woods. It’s all of this stuff, and somebody is holding it. And thus far, matriarchs have been that archival specter. And when we lose those people, there’s a seismic shift in the way family works. There’s a seismic shift in the way community works. And we see that in the way this film has been set up.
