The New Yorker Radio Hour - Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington

Episode Date: November 19, 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. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Denzel Washington, of course, is one of the great presences in American film, going back 40-plus years. But he's also made his mark as a producer. Specifically, Washington has set out to adapt for film 10 plays by the late August Wilson, the 10 plays known as the Century Cycle. Viola Davis starred in Fences in Maheraney's Black Bottom, and now Danielle Deadweiler stars in the piano lesson.

A couple of years ago, Deadweiler gave an amazing performance in the film Till as Emmett Till's mother, and she was profiled in The New Yorker by Doreen San Felix. I first saw Danielle Deadweiler perform in Station 11 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. In the piano lesson, the Charles family is rent asunder by this object, this talisman, which is a peasant. 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. Then 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'm glad to see Dokey. I come 1800 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 San Felix, 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. 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 bussing in in the middle of the night. We go bussing here.

With this large energy and his secret purpose of wanting to get that P.N. 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. Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for 17 years. For 17 years She rubbed on it Till her hands bled Then she rubbed the blood in Mixed it with the rest of the blood on it Every day God breathed life

Into her body She rubbed and cleaned And polished and prayed over Play some for me, Bernice Place something for me, Bernice Place something for me, Bernice. Place something for me, Bernice Every day

I cleaned it up for you Play something for me, Bernice. You always talking about your daddy. But you'll never stop to look at what his foolishness caused your mama. 17 years worth a cold nights and an empty bed for what? In Malcolm Washington's adaptation of this play, we have flashback. So we see a young Bernice playing the piano for her mother, which leads me to ask, how do you interpret the piano?

You know, as both symbol of history, of tradition, of ancestry. What's your relationship to the piano? The piano is a living, breathing object. It's a living, breathing altar. It's a portal. It's a door. It takes up so much space in the design of the home. and it takes up so much space in the consciousness of everyone in the house. It's Big Mama-esque, yeah.

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... who want to grow in any real way. And 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, therein gets to be questioned. It's pulling both of them in to really assess who they think they are. are and who they really want to be and who they think they are with or without each other.

Danielle Deadweiler speaking with Doreen San Felix. More in a moment. 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. Right. Wilson was obsessed with his mother. And in some ways, pedestized 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 was 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 Latania Richardson. in 2022, you hadn't been in a part of that group. Did you have conversations with your actors about who they thought Bernice was? No, I don't talk to them about who Bernice is. They don't know who Bernice did. No, we didn't have a conversation, none of that guys. Malcolm and I did.

Malcolm and I dove. Malcolm and I talked about the spiritual trajectory. We talked about Zornil 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. Mm-hmm. 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 in between the spaces that are haunting Bernice. Bernice hadn't been back to Mississippi.

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 going to Haiti. She's chilling in the South learning about who do. 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, 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. 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, and work. in modes of survival in the way you practice at home the way one cleans that's a specific history that'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 to passing on history absolutely that's why it's important to like block out all of the books and block out all of the conversation and 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. 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 out in your quotidian life. Like it's imperative. You learn stuff from cats on the street corner, you know, who's just sitting there all day as much as you learn from a teacher in the building. Absolutely.

This is a film about family, about the difficulty of maintaining family. but it's also made by a family, which I find very interesting. I think the emergence of the Washington family as a troop in and of itself is interesting, right? Because Malcolm directed, his brother John David plays boy Willie in the film, Olivia Washington, his sister, as a cameo in the film. Katya Washington produced, and of course, Denzel is the one who had said,

I'm going to commit to adapting every single one of the plays in August Wilson's American Century cycle to film. And so the piano lesson is the third adaptation. And Pauletta. And Palletto. Exactly. What's your impression of the family and their relationship to art? It seems that it surrounds the way they've built themselves.

And everybody didn't come to it immediately. seems, right? John David wouldn't play ball, even though he knows he loved it, right? And Malcolm was a big basketball player and thought to do a certain thing in a certain way at one time, but it's just been life force for them.

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 Katte have been unsaid together already. And, you know, 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 and sorts with them, you're 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. Well, 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 past, right? Historys are passed by the dinner table. Histories are passed whilst you're making the thing. Histories are passed on set. Histories are past 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 Washington 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 and artists react to this version. There's a sense of Wilson being almost like a creative, like a folk tale that every generation is then able to bring to bear their own experiences on. And I welcome that. That makes it intergenerational. That makes it... Right.

That makes it ripple. You can just see the wake continue. The New Yorker's Doreen-San-Felik 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 Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, 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 Summer. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part

by the Cherina Endowment Fund.