The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Tue, 19 Nov 2024
Danielle Deadwyler, who first grabbed the spotlight for her performance as Emmett Till’s mother in the film “Till,” stars in a new film called “The Piano Lesson”—one of August Wilson’s Century Cycle plays about Black life in Pittsburgh. Denzel Washington has committed to adapting and producing all ten of Wilson’s Century Cycle plays; “The Piano Lesson” is directed by his son Malcolm, and his other son John David co-stars. Deadwyler plays Berniece, a widow who has kept the family piano after her migration north to Pittsburgh; her brother, who remained in Mississippi, wants to sell it to buy a plot of land. Themes of inheritance and history are central to the siblings’ conflict. “Histories are passed as we keep doing things together . . . through struggle, through joy, through lovemaking, through challenge,” Deadwyler explained to the New Yorker’s Doreen St. Félix. “The Piano Lesson” is playing in select theatres, and will be available on Netflix starting November 22nd.
Chapter 1: Who is Danielle Deadwyler and what role does she play?
I first saw Danielle Dedweiler perform in Station Eleven on HBO. And in Danielle's latest role, she plays Bernice in the film The Piano Lesson, a period piece set in 1936. So we have the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Great Migration. It's a chamber drama about family, about the creation, the potential dissolution of the Black family at the beginning of the 20th century.
Chapter 2: What themes are explored in The Piano Lesson?
In the piano lesson, the Charles family is rent asunder by this object, this talisman, which is a piano, on which are carved the likenesses of their ancestors. Bernice is the sister of the Charles family. She is a widow. She has lost her husband. She is a mother to young Maritha. We meet Bernice in the middle of the night. She's awoken by her brother, Boy Willie.
It's five o'clock in the morning and you come in here with all this noise. You can't come like normal. She's got to bring all that noise with you. Oh, hell, woman, I was glad to see Dokey. I come 1,800 miles to see my sister. I figured she might want to get up and say hi.
Boy Willie has driven up from Mississippi to Pittsburgh to confront her about this piano. He wants to sell it, and he wants to use the money that he can make from the sale to buy the farm that his family worked on as sharecroppers.
Bernice can't fathom that, and she feels that the piano is the representation of the Charles family, of her mother's grief, and that to let it go would be to lose identity.
The brother, boy Willie, is played by John David Washington, who's of course Denzel's son. And Malcolm Washington, Denzel's other son, directed the film. Here's staff writer Doreen Sanfelix speaking with Danielle Deadweiler.
I think about Bernice as having made a tremendous kinetic movement when the story begins, right? Having made that journey to Pittsburgh, having made that so-called great migration during the Great Depression. That's so crazy. Right?
Because you say it like that, the great migration, it's literal, but internally it's not.
Right, exactly. It's not for her. And so when boy Willie comes busting in in the middle of the night. We go busting again. With this like large energy and his secret purpose of wanting to get that piano back to sell it. Bernice, that fragile stability that she has is completely torn asunder.
And there's this wonderful scene that I want to play right now where you talk to boy Willie about this piano that Bernice typically doesn't want to talk about. She doesn't want to play it, but she wants to keep it. And so let's listen to that scene right now.
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Chapter 3: How does the piano symbolize family history?
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Great Migration in the story?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And its language is just much more stealth and loud considering, right, it's silent or it is being forced to be silent. Right. And that's haunting. It's dangerous for people who want to grow in any real way. Right. That's why it's pushing on both of them. Like, do you really get to grow because you get money?
Do you really get to grow because you're going to get some land at a time where white supremacy and Jim Crow are not interested in any kind of black American cultural growth? And are you really going to be upwardly mobile? Just because you have a job, just because you're not in the South, just because you align with a man of the cloth? Are you really going to grow because you present well?
Is that true growth? The piano is questioning both of them. And everybody in the house, their end gets to be questioned. Right. It's pulling both of them in to really assess who they think they are and who they really want to be and who they think they are with or without each other.
Danielle Deadweiler speaking with Doreen Sanfelix. More in a moment.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that. I'm doing something else now. I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them. Some massive and life altering and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind. No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
The piano lesson, to me, is one of the more interesting Wilson plays because you see him confronting, I think, the ideas that he was raised with, given that he was so enamored of his mother. Wilson was obsessed with his mother and in some ways pedestalized her for that. And when she didn't give him love, he was, you know, traumatized by that.
I think Bernice is such a prismatic character because we see him looking at the Black woman who is sometimes made into the Black matriarch from so many different perspectives. I was curious, when you came into this group of actors, many of them who had already either worked in the revival on Broadway that was directed by LaTanya Richardson in 2022, You hadn't been in a part of that group.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Danielle Deadwyler share about her character?
They don't know who Bernice is. No, we didn't have a conversation. None of the guys. Malcolm and I did. Malcolm and I dove. Malcolm and I talked about the spiritual trajectory. We talked about Zora Neale Hurston.
We talked about— Oh, that's really interesting. Can you say more about—what about Zora?
So at the time, I had been reading her letters. Mm-hmm. That thick book of letters, right? This thing that people don't really do to communicate intimacies anymore. But just how bold she was. How playful and mysterious she was. How free. And Bernice is not exactly that. Or perhaps is working to get to that in the best way she can.
So she felt like an inspiration, like Zora's an inspiration or someone she could have witnessed and seen as a flicker, as a long-form figure. She's the person who's moving back and forth in time and between the spaces that are haunting Bernice. Bernice hadn't been back to Mississippi.
Mm-hmm.
Zora's going back and forth all the time. Bernice is entrenched in traditional Black American Christianity. Zora's leaving the country. She's going to Haiti. She's chilling in the South learning about hoodoo. She's doing all of the things. So that contrast just felt significant to hold on to. Because the other end of the coin is the Captain Maternal that she witnessed in the form of her mother.
And this is the thing that made her fearful of a true self, of her authentic experience, of acknowledging it outwardly.
You know, at one point, all the adults are downstairs and they're talking and they're arguing. Maritha is alone upstairs and she feels a presence, a spectral presence. And it is scary for her because a ghost is a ghost. But it's also scary because her mother, Bernice, has not actually given her the knowledge, has not done that transmission of family history before.
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Chapter 6: How does The Piano Lesson address cultural growth in the Black community?
I wanted to hear you talk about the different kinds of histories that you have a relationship to as an artist, but also that this character has a relationship to being the oral, being, you know, the written record. How do you think history is made? How is it passed down? Just a light question.
It's a light one. Light work. Oh, my goodness. History is... Largely orally passed down in black communities. Information is spread in all kinds of ways. Musically. In movement. In work. In modes of survival. In the way you practice at home. The way one cleans. That's a specific history. There's a whole bunch. But I think about those when I think about the ways that it's most immediate.
Right.
Yeah.
Almost subconscious.
Yeah. The subconscious is major when it comes to passing on history.
Absolutely.
That's why it's important to block out all of the books and block out all of the conversation in institutions and educational spaces so that it can't be in your subconscious, right? If I get it out of this space, then I can assuredly keep you from questioning in any other space. It won't be on your mind all the time.
You won't be able to think negatively of others or question society or question your place in the world. History making, histories being developed have to take place in your quotidian life. It's imperative. You learn stuff from cats on the street corner who's just sitting there all day As much as you learn from a teacher in the building.
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Chapter 7: What was August Wilson's relationship with his mother?
And when you get to a mature stage and realizing who you are, by our forces combined, we are. You know what I mean? That's what that feels like. And everybody has been doing things consistently, individually or in duos like John David and Katya have been on set together already. And, you know, you can't. You just see people who are bringing everybody into the fold now.
They are a collective spirit unto themselves. And then you extend beyond. So when you say family of sorts within me, like literally this family. And then there's a family that's being made film-wise. And then there's a greater family that is being made audience-wise. That's just, that's what you do with art. I mean, that's what the stories are when we all sit.
Or the stories are when we have dinner. Or the stories are as we tour. Like, what does it mean to have been a part of these historical moments? This is how, you know, histories are passed, right? Histories are passed by the dinner table. Histories are passed whilst you're making the thing. Histories are passed on set. Histories are passed while you're gardening.
You know, I'm thinking about my grandma. Like, histories are passed as we keep doing things together. And you just continue. Keep doing things together through struggle, through joy, through lovemaking, through challenge. And that's what the Washingtons feel like. You keep making stuff. You keep coming back to each other. You keep forging ahead. You keep... Rebirthing.
I think the word that keeps rolling around in my head is inheritance, right? Because it's about inheriting from the generation prior, whether that is from actual people, their lives, their histories, but also the work that they created. And with this film adaptation, which inherits prior stage reproductions, the TV adaptation...
All I can think about is how interesting it will be to see in 10, 15, 20 years an artist react to this version. There's a sense of Wilson being almost like a creator of like a folktale that every generation is then able to bring to bear their own experiences on. And I welcome that.
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Chapter 8: How does the cast approach the character of Bernice?
That makes it intergenerational. That makes it ripple. You get to see the wake continue.
The New Yorker's Doreen Sanfelix speaking with Danielle Deadweiler. The Piano Lesson is in theaters and streaming on Netflix later this month. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today, and thanks for listening. See you next time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of TuneArts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that. I'm doing something else now. I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them. Some massive and life-altering and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind. No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
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