Denzel Washington has been on a quest to adapt all of the works in playwright August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle for years. But with “The Piano Lesson,” Wilson’s work has become a family affair.
In 2015, Washington announced that he had made an arrangement with Wilson’s estate to adapt all ten of the plays included in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle – also known as the Century Cycle. Although the details of that arrangement may have evolved over the years, the goal has remained the same. “The Piano Lesson,” which will be available on Netflix on Nov. 22, is the third adaptation produced by Washington and his producing partner Todd Black, following 2020’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and 2016’s “Fences,” which Washington also starred in and directed.
“The Piano Lesson,” however, has expanded the Washington family’s involvement in this grand Wilson adaptation project. The film is directed by Denzel’s son Malcolm, and stars his other son John David. His daughter Katia serves as an executive producer, and his wife Pauletta and daughter Olivia both appear in the film.
It tracks that the Washington siblings would want to be involved in a project like this.
“I grew up seeing so many incredible ensemble performances, so many incredible groups,” Malcolm said during a joint interview with John David and actress Danielle Deadwyler, who also stars in the film. “We talk about the Spike Lee camp of the 80s and 90s in filmmaking, and then there are similar camps in comedy, like the Wayans and ‘In Living Color,’ everybody that came through those communities. So we grew up with that kind of aspiration, to be a part of a movement like that.”
Filmed in Atlanta, “The Piano Lesson” stars John David as Boy Willie Charles, a sharecropper who wants to sell his family’s heirloom piano to buy the land where his ancestors were once enslaved. The piano itself, carved with depictions of the Charles family’s history throughout the years, resides in the home of Boy Willie’s Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) and his sister, Berniece (Deadwyler) – and Berniece has no intention of letting that piano go.
Wilson’s work in the Pittsburgh Cycle aims to explore the Black experience throughout the 20th century, the plays spanning that stretch of time and exploring questions of identity, place and shared history. “The Piano Lesson” in particular wrestles with questions over how to reckon with the past, and the importance of one’s familial legacy, and how that might shape the present or the future.
“The Piano Lesson,” both as a work and this particular adaptation, marks an interesting intersection between old and new, the film’s very existence a representation of how Wilson’s work evolves and continues to resonate. The cast includes noted Wilsonian veterans, like Michael Potts and Samuel L. Jackson (who played Boy Willie in the play’s first production at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987), as well as younger actors who grew up on Wilson’s plays, now helping to bring them to a new audience.
“I think we’re experiencing the evolution of [Wilson’s work] currently,” John David said. “I’d like to think of our project as the nexus between the OGs, the Wilsonians that have done it before, and people like the high school kids we met at Telluride [Film Festival] who responded to it so passionately.”
Malcolm and Deadwyler both echoed John David’s excitement about how younger audiences are receiving the film – screenings at both Morehouse and Spelman Colleges reportedly went very well. Simply by virtue of being filmed, Wilson’s work now has a chance to reach a wider, younger audience, the work and their understanding of it growing and changing as they grow and change themselves.
“The niche group has broken open, and now we can have a bigger, more expansive conversation about it,” Deadwyler said. “The play and the film are about intergenerationality, and how that leadership moves.”
Deadwyler found that tension between the past and future within Berniece as well – a character who has a known understanding of her life being forced into the space of the unknown. In the film, Berniece, a widow, is pursued by a pastor, a man named Avery Brown (Corey Hawkins). She’s unsure of her future with Brown, and that becomes more complicated when her brother, her family’s past, and a new man – her brother’s friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) – collide.
“She’s a traditionalist engaging with the prospect of this gentleman in Avery, a burgeoning pastor who has roots similar to hers. And yet, she has a tension in moving forward in any way with him, and then has this kind of eruptive desire and flame build … with Lymon,” Deadwyler said. “That eroticism is not purely sexual, but it is very much what’s driving you into a greater sense of your own personal life force”
Bringing a play to the screen – making the theatrical cinematic, melding Wilson’s words with the visual language of film – is not an easy process. Malcolm, who co-wrote the script with Virgil Williams, said they tried to strike a fine balance between honoring the beauty of Wilson’s dialogue while also trying to find the story beyond the words.
“There are a lot of lines that we took out, a lot of monologues that we took out. But the spirit of those things, the ideas of those things, are totally in there, because they’re either expressed visually or the actors are taking a thread of story that is not in the script,” Malcolm said. “We get to communicate these things in different ways now, which is exciting.”
Malcolm said he approached the adaptation the same way he figured an actor would – trying to burrow inside of Wilson’s work and find the visual language therewithin.
“You really feel his voice and hear his voice when you’re in that process, and then as you keep carrying that down the line, your own voice starts to come out,” he said. “You have no choice but to interpret it yourself and put those ideas up against your own ideas, and see how you read the thing and what comes out of you.”
The actors had a similar job, finding the transition between stage and screen. Many of the actors – including John David, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Potts and Ray Fisher – appeared in the 2022 Broadway revival of the play before heading down to Atlanta to film.
John David jokingly compared his quick transition from stage to screen to the likes of professional football/baseball players Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders (“I didn’t accomplish it the way they did! You know, maybe a broken hip.”), garnering big laughs and more than a little ribbing from his brother and co-star.
He might have been joking, but the difference in feeling between stage and screen is palpable – the reaction and interaction with a stage audience versus the relative solitude of a movie set. John David said the atmosphere on set sometimes allowed him the freedom to dig into his character more than he had onstage. He remembered a moment where, as he was waiting for a shot to be set up, he started improvising moments for Boy Willie, using the space that the delay provided to find the character physically and visually.
“That was very informative to the character,” John David said. “He says a line – ‘I just wanna be easy with everything.’ I think that’s what he’s talking about. And we get to see that, there’s visual evidence to those words. It helps the behavior of the character.”
Even though the play is set in Pittsburgh, Malcolm said being able to film in Atlanta contributed to the story they were trying to tell – one of Black history, culture and community. Atlanta might not be where “The Piano Lesson” actually takes place, but the world of the movie has a particular connection to Atlanta nonetheless.
“To be able to shoot it here, and have that soil, that dirt here, and connect to that – there’s a location … this piece of land that Boy Willie is trying to buy,” Malcolm said. “To be able to bring that character here and touch the soil, touch the root, touch the crop, connect with the earth in that way, I think brought such a great dynamism to the film.”