Danielle Deadwyler stars in the Netflix adaptation of the August Wilson play The Piano Lesson. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about her journey from the Atlanta theater scene to the big screen, her three masters degrees, and playing Mamie Till, mother of Emmett, in the 2022 movie Till. Also, our book critic Maureen Corrigan shares her top 10 books of 2024. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who is Danielle Deadwyler and what is her role in The Piano Lesson?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is actress Danielle Deadweiler.
She's known for her powerhouse performances in shows like the HBO Max dystopian series Station Eleven, the Netflix Western The Harder They Fall, and the critically acclaimed film Till, where she portrays Mamie, the mother of Emmett Till, whose brutal murder in the 50s became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement.
Danielle Deadweiler now stars in the new Netflix adaptation of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson as Bernice, a widowed single mother living in 1930s Pittsburgh, locked in a fierce battle with her brother, Boy Willie, over the family's heirloom piano. It was a family production behind the scenes.
Denzel Washington produced it, his son Malcolm directed, and his other son John David stars opposite Deadweiler as the boisterous boy Willie, an enterprising sharecropper from Mississippi who wants to sell the piano to use the money to buy the land his ancestors worked on as slaves. Deadweiler's character Bernice insists the piano stay in the family.
As the siblings battle it out, they are haunted by the ghosts of their past. Danielle Deadweiler grew up performing, but didn't start her professional career as an actor. She has three master's degrees and spent time teaching elementary school before returning to the stage.
Her first big break was as Lady in Yellow in the play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough. Danielle Deadweiler, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. I am very curious. You know, almost every Black actor in theater that I've spoken to talks about this moment.
There is a moment where they first experience Wilson's work, August Wilson, and they talk about it in a romantic way, in a way that almost was like an awakening. Do you remember when you first encountered his plays?
I remember seeing Seven Guitars on Broadway. You know those people? That is your uncle or that is your cousin or your aunt or whomever. It is an awakening. It's rupturing to see that on stage performance.
Blackness in its fullness, the rhythms and the silences and the beats and the combustion and just the electricity of what it means to come from a certain private cultural space, to see that magnified, it is deeply awakening. And then I've seen it, you know, in numerous other ways, right? I'm from Atlanta. And so a lot of my mentors, my OGs, were people who did these works.
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Chapter 2: What are the themes of The Piano Lesson?
And that is what Bernice had to witness. Bernice had to witness her mother wanting connection to her father in this spiritual capacity. And that became Bernice's job. to be this conduit for her mother to connect to her father and to connect to whomever, whatever other ancestral spirits are inhabiting the space.
I've heard you say that you overprepared for this role. And I was just wondering what that meant. How did you overprepare?
Oh, well, you know, with film, you can, I mean, you do different things for each project. Sometimes you take it day by day and the scenes change and whatnot. But in this, we're straight up doing the play. And so I understood myself to prepare for a play. I need to know everything. I need to know—because the guys were already—the majority of the guys—
had already come off of doing the Broadway production from 2022.
Right, John David had performed in the Broadway production, and of course we know Samuel L. Jackson and many of the other characters as well.
Yeah, Michael Potts and Ray Fisher, right? And so myself and Corey are coming in, and you... you're going to establish a new thing, but they're already rooted. And so it just took a lot of extra time to let the language sit in. And when you're talking about this caliber of work, when you're talking about this kind of legacy, you want to honor it in that manner.
And so over-preparing is living in it differently with regard to theater. It inhabits you. Every day, right? Like, it's like, it's with me all day long. Resorting to it throughout the day.
Does that mean like in a literal sense, like you're carrying on the script with you? In a literal sense.
It's with me all day. It's with me every day. Yeah. And referring to it, thinking about it all day. It's a ghostly figure in a way. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did Danielle Deadwyler prepare for her role?
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the piano in the story?
You know, Danielle, everyone who has ever worked with you, including director Malcolm Washington, he calls you a physical actor. And I was trying to figure out what that meant. I think I understand it in the context of theater. There's so much physicality there. And it's very evident in watching you in all of your work. Like, you convey so much meaning with your eyes.
But what does it mean physically? For you, when you hear that you're a physical actor, what does that mean?
The whole body is to be utilized, right? So the eyes are deeply physical, too. I'm up on it. I'm up in it. It's coming out. I feel it very deeply. You know, I want to lean in for all of it, not just in the scene, but when I'm engaging with my director. I'm trying to find the language in the body, not just out of the tongue, off the tongue, you know. Yeah, I'm a dancer first.
That's my first medium since I was four or five.
You started off as a dancer as a young girl.
Yeah, and then that's a natural segue into theater. It's like those two things were happening almost at the same time. Dance is, you know, a first language. It's an immediate language. You don't have to... If somebody says hello in various languages, you may not know it. But if someone raises their hand, that's a gesture that signifies hello, right?
You can infer certain things from the way people look at you. The totality of the human body is... can be a part of choreography. It is defining of who and how a person is. And so taking all of that in, I mean, I talk with my hands. I move my whole body to have an experience, to have a connection. And it might be within stillness. It might be slight. But But that communicates something, too.
Stillness is still a particular kind of motion or, you know, non-motion. It's something. Silence articulates something as much as a whirlwind communicates something. And so I'm just trying to speak in all those ways.
Can you take me to that moment when you realized, when you decided, I need to act as a career? Because you were on the academic track. So you were a dancer as a young child, moved into theater. It was always something you did and loved to do, but you never really saw it as a career. You went to school, got two degrees, teaching elementary school, and then having this... Okay. Three. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Bernice face in The Piano Lesson?
Well, in elementary, you're teaching everything, right? You're doing math, science, English, and all these things. And so the critical thing is, oh, I'm doing read alouds. And read alouds are performative, or at least I made them performative. And they would be completely in it. The kids, yeah. Yeah, they would. What grade? Sorry, I've like really asked you. I did fourth and fifth grade.
Fourth grade, the first year, fifth grade, the second year. And so, I mean, yeah, like, everybody wants to be read, too. It's such a beautiful thing. And so I'm doing this, and I'm like, oh, parts of me are, you know, there's an undulation of energy that's happening that's not at its fullness, but it's happening. And I'm like, oh, I remember that. What's this feeling?
And I'm doing after-school programs where, you know, after-school is very much arts-driven. And so I'm like, something is... Something is missing, something is missing, something is missing. Because all through grad school, or at least my first master's, I was doing a play a year, at least. And through, you know, when I was an undergrad, a play a year.
It didn't dominate the entirety of the experience, but it surely was present. And so to get to a point where I'm teaching, and I'm like, oh, this is my adult, like super adult responsibility right now. And I'm not having...
the the one a year thing at least and I was like something is something's driving oh it's this it's this oh I need this I need this fuller I need this more every day I need this in all the ways and um I went to an audition and I leapt from there
You went to the audition. Did you get the role? I sure did. I sure did. I got Lady in Yellow for Jasmine Guy's directorial debut.
For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough. Is enough. Did you quit right on the spot teaching? Did I?
I think that was... I think it was in the, that may have been the summer. I knew I wasn't going back. I knew I wasn't going back. I told my sister, I need to do, I need to do more. And she's like, yeah. And I was like, yeah. And so I didn't go back. I went to something else.
Our guest today is actor Danielle Deadweiler. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.
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Chapter 6: How did Danielle Deadwyler get into acting?
In that moment, it's light. You feel the weight and the buoyancy of it, too. The children make it lighthearted. And to do it with my son is just, you know... it makes it that much more deep and real that the emotion comes from. Yeah. Even if it's not like a particular kind of sadness, grief, loss, blah, blah, blah. It's more, you know, what you fear, what you want to do to just keep them alive.
The same way Bernice is trying to keep Marita alive in a certain way and pushing her upward. It's like just in that moment, she's just trying to keep Emmett alive.
You know, what's remarkable with this film is that you all chose to show us the interior of Mamie. And, you know, the thing about Emmett Till's story is that I think for so many Black Americans, like, he's deeply embedded in our consciousness because we know that story as a cautionary tale, but we also just learn it as a piece of history. It sparked, like, what we knew as the civil rights.
And how did you prepare to play her?
I know it's bigger than a cautionary tale. It's changed the way a generation of people move through the world. It changes the way mother's mother. You're literally rearing for survival. And everybody that I've talked to of a certain generation knows, oh, that could have been my cousin or that could have been me. Or I see myself, not just men, women as well.
And so in preparing, I have that understanding. I have a history of working and learning together. under the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Did you go to that as a child? And can you talk a little bit about what that is?
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, is an organization that was started by Dr. King and Joseph E. Lowry and others for activism purposes. So my siblings and I, my sister first, of course, essentially interned in this space, learned so much about their work, did, you know, youth work with the organization. And then therein you learn about history. You learn about Atlanta's place.
You learn about the South's place and history. inactivating, you know, fight for civil rights. And so that knowledge, that very personal knowledge is informing what I understand in bringing that artistic form to life. And it's a driving force for me as a person, you know. And the women who were integral, so many women, male leaders tend to be, you know, platformed and yet
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