Interview: Danielle Deadwyler (‘The Piano Lesson’) on Protecting Berniece’s Legacy and the Power of August Wilson’s Work

Over the last couple of years, the world has gotten to know Danielle Deadwyler, thanks in large part to her breakout, celebrated turn as Mamie Till in 2022’s Till. But before her career in film began, Deadwyler got her start on the stage in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Born and raised in Atlanta, she fell in love with the local theater companies from a very young age, inspired by the stories that were told that reflected her community’s life, experiences, and ancestral bonds. This inspiration blossomed into a passion as she went on to get an undergraduate degree at Spelman College and then left home to pursue her Masters of Arts at Columbia University. But even after moving away for school, home called her back, and she ended up working in the same theaters she once was an audience member in, now giving the next generation the same curious optimum to pursue a life in the arts like she did. It was in returning home to Atlanta where she became a notable name for her role as Lady in Yellow for the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf in 2009, as well as raved reviews for her work as the lead in a production of The C.A. Lyons Project in 2012. Over the next ten years, she worked on stage, in minor roles in several television shows, most notably Atlanta, Watchmen, P-Valley. At the same time, she found her way into the film world, slowly building up to her roles in The Harder They Fall and Till, and the celebrated HBO limited series’ Watchmen and Station Eleven, where she became known to mass audiences with her captivating, commanding performances.

Her latest work finds her delivering the best work of her career so far in Malcolm Washington’s debut feature, The Piano Lesson, based on the award winning play by celebrated American playwright August Wilson. In the film, Deadwyler plays Berenice Charles, a widow, mother who is battling with her brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) over the issue of selling their family piano. But is more than just an ordinary piano, but a deeply rooted piece of their family’s legacy, one that Berenice wants to protect for as long as she can. In my review from the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year, I wrote about how Deadwyler’s work in The Piano Lesson is “nothing short of a transcendent,” a “magnificent performance” that is “marvelous work that will remain as some of the best of the year.” And just like Till, Deadwyler is already receiving praise for her role of Berenice as she just landed a Gotham nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance. 

I recently spoke with Deadwyler about her connection to August Wilson’s work, working with her first time director Malcolm Washington, being a part of this massive ensemble of talented actors (who will be receiving the Ensemble Tribute at the Gotham Awards). We also talked about the responsibility of working within stories that carry legacy, what other August Wilson plays she’d like to be a part of, and not being defined by the few roles that she’s played. With her talent, openness, and inquisitiveness as a performer, Danielle Deadwyler will continue to show us all that she can deliver impeccable work across many genres, making her a force that will be around for a long time.

Ryan McQuade: I saw the film back at Telluride, and I loved it. And I know that you were born in Atlanta and seeing August Wilson’s plays was so important to you. What was that feeling for you when you first saw his work, and how seeing that on stage or seeing that now represented on film, how does that feel?

Danielle Deadwyler: Oh, man. When you see August’s work for the first time, or just remembering witnessing that as a kid, it’s deeply compelling. You want to know, how the fuck did they compress this into this experience and all of those rhythms and that bravado and that energy, in that way. It’s just so raw and rich. And as a kid, you’re like, this is what Black adulthood looks like. You know these people, but it’s amplified. It’s my uncle, it’s my grandmother. It’s all of these people who define your life, but propelled to another place towards a crazy, urgent intention, a cosmic spiritual intention. That happens in quotidian life too, but when to engage in a communal experience, it’s heightened, it’s otherworldly, and it’s fucking majestic. And that’s the kind of stuff you want to do. I just know that that’s the pinnacle of the kind of work I wanted to do.

RM: What were your first impressions, not just of the script, but obviously the play, Malcolm’s vision and a sense of who Bernice was? What was that first impression of this journey you’ve gone on for The Piano Lesson?

DD: Well, it just hit all the notes of what he was intending to do to bring us into a genre understanding of it. Because I think, you think about horror, you think about a gothic quality to something. It’s not about it being scary because it’s, oh, this thing you don’t understand or you don’t see in the world a lot. No, that’s real. That’s exactly why people have an uneasiness in dealing with spirituality in a certain way, because they don’t understand it. And so, that’s what Bernice’s thing is. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what it does, to or what it has done to my family, and I don’t want that thing to be done to me. And that’s wrestling with the grief and wrestling with the loss, and wrestling with what you have traditionally been connected to, and going into something that’s much more intuitive. That’s rich within Southern Black American Christianity, moving into a hybridized, intuitive, raw, West African spirituality.

And I think that’s the thing that all people are trying to figure out. What is this? Is it a drama? Is it a horror? It means that it’s everything. It’s for everyone. It’s not a Black American story. It’s an American story. Yes, it is a Black American story. It is an American story. It is the thing that everybody is lurching through, how to connect a family, how to reconnect with family, and that is witnessed in the form of gothic horror, in the form of period pieces, in the form of drama, all of that.

RM: The film is a lot about generational decisions and secrets.

DD: Yeah. Yeah.

RM: And the legacy and protection of that. When I was watching it, I was thinking of your work in Till, about how she’s very protective of the legacy of Emmett post his passing. For Bernice, she’s protective of her family’s legacy, that piano is her legacy, the stories, but also the pain behind her own experience of that legacy and her ancestors’ experience. Could you maybe talk about selecting projects that speak to generational protection and legacy and the decisions behind that protection?

DD: I mean, at the end of the day, I’ve been given an opportunity to do that. I’m connected. I have walked with that responsibility a few times and have it moving forward in future projects. I take it very seriously. And so, that means that it’s being attracted to me because I have such reverence for history, because this is the legacy of the Till family, or that Till is the legacy of the Till family, this is the legacy of August Wilson’s family. And then in the future, I will have the legacy of other families.

And thinking about Otis and Zelma, it’s critical to reengage. We are in a state of flux of just, I mean, it’s a terrorization, in a way, to think about the way that certain American educational systems are not trying to talk about history, in the way that it’s beyond a misinformation or disinformation campaign to consider Black American influence all in American culture. And so, if that is my background as a person, not just as a student in institutions, my life and knowledge and intelligence are reared in Black American life and Black American arts, and so it is my responsibility to usher that forward. And I do not mind those weights because they’re imperative to be looked upon, to be investigated, to be known, to be discussed.

And it is something that is not just in the making of a film. It is a continuous effort. I will talk about Till for the rest of my life. I will talk about this August Wilson piece for the rest of my life. Whatever it is with regard to family’s legacies, project-wise, will be a conversation for the rest of my life. You do not engage in a family’s work and then slough off. It is not dead skin. It is very much alive. And I have such reverence for their contributions to our world, to our world making. So, I’m happy to take those on, but I do take on other things, too.

RM: Absolutely. Bernice is a mother, she’s a sister, she’s a niece, but she’s also heartbroken.

D: She’s a widow. Yeah. She’s grief stricken.

RM: She’s balancing all this protection. But for her, there’s a lot of heartbreak in this character, and you see it slowly as the film plays out, especially in the second act. Could you talk a little bit about seeing that heartbreak in her and portraying that alongside the unwillingness to forgive her brother?

DD: Yeah. At the end of the day, I mean, it’s not just people who are battling with grief. It’s longing. Grief is much more than melancholy and depression and sadness. It’s a desire for something else. It’s a visceral desire for, an imagining of memory or an imagining of a future. And it’s hard to get through that. It’s hard to get to the imagining. And so, resentment and anger and rage brew. And we can see, I mean, especially because they have not had communication, the reckoning with it has not revealed itself so that she can move forward, so that she can manifest the imagining. And so we’re at a critical moment. I mean, the urgency of the play is insane, of the film is insane, but I think more about Bernice’s longing and desire for something else, for something otherwise beyond the grief. And that’s her tangoing with whether or not to be with Avery. And along with Boy Willie comes another inkling of intent, another inkling of raw desire, something that she hadn’t quite remembered in herself.

RM: Yeah, no, that was the next thing I was going to ask, which is, she has desires. It’s almost, too, what I felt that she’s trying to allow herself to get back to that place of love. And I mean, she has responsibilities, but it’s human wants and needs.

DD: It’s human wants. Yeah.

RM: Yeah. It’s what you need.

DD: But not to be forced upon. The violence of Mississippi, the violence of the loss of Crowley, the violence of whether or not she … I mean, did she really want to make the choice to leave if she was still with Crowley? Perhaps not. But because the trauma is so palpable, because it’s the trauma of the loss of father and the loss of husband, oh, I got to get the hell out of here and move forward, move, upward mobility, literally. And in tow is the piano, right? And so, them walking through the door is, I have to deal with this thing that I don’t quite, that I haven’t quite touched on. And that’s why Avery has been in holding. He’s in holding. The piano is in holding, in a way. The piano is always present. The ancestry is always present. It’s just like, oh, no longer. This is no longer in holding because Sutter has revealed himself. So, everything is at a climax.

RM: You are part of this incredible ensemble that Malcolm put together here. And so, what was it like working with John David [Washington] and Samuel [L Jackson], who were very familiar with the piece on stage, but also those scenes that you were just talking with Corey [Hawkins], and then also with Ray [Fisher] that are so important to Berenice’s journey? It’s quite beautiful work.

DD: (pauses) They’re the most loving and torturous men I’ve dealt with in my life. (both laugh) Oh, that’s what you get for coming in and being the neophyte in the group. No, I knew I had to over-prepare because everybody had already done the work, except Corey, and he did the same as I, right? And just prepared to do a play. And they just welcomed me. I mean, we all know what we came to do. We know that you have a reverence for August’s work, and then you get to do it in, you get to have this more interior experience, an intimate experience of it in this film version. And so I think we just gave to each other. It’s a collective surrendering. Sam is just an insane mind. He knows everything. He knows every line. Davey and I just, we beat up on each other, and you have to have an insane amount of love in order to do that, to go there every day again and again and again.

Corey and Ray are just consummate artists, and compassionate and graceful and patient and all of those things. So we just gave that to each other, every day. It’s extremely familial. And when we talk about those scenes, specifically with Corey and Ray, it’s just a delicacy. It’s so vibrant when everybody is in the room, and that’s where you have Bernice really fighting because all of these men have an intention, because patriarchy is patriarchy regardless of color. But you get to squeeze down who she is emotionally and the complexity of what she is seeking when negotiating these one-on-one interactions.

Avery is representative of the past, seeking a particular traditional future, and Lyman in Ray’s performances. And in the conversations that I’ve had and heard that he’s had about him, he’s a different perspective. He’s technically a stranger, and yet he’s the only one who really listens to her. He’s the only one who has equity and reciprocity in their engagement. He actually affirms her in other parts of the play, in the film, where everybody’s in the room and she is having a moment and speaking, he is actually, “maybe she is right.” This first line, “You look exactly how I thought you looked.” What the fuck did you just say to me? That’s peculiar and compelling and almost paralleling the beauty of Crowley, in a weird way, right? So, yeah, she’s caught between this seemingly cleared path of growth to wherever Black people could at that time in Avery, and a surprising, unknown, raw something in Lyman. Yeah.

RM: Obviously this is Malcolm’s debut, which is crazy-

DD: Technically.

RR: Technically, yes.

DD: Cosmically, no. Earthly, yes.

RM: Yes. Were there any things specifically that you both looked at together as influence outside of the play for your performance or that you both specifically were looking at to build the complexity of Bernice with yourself there in that collaborative experience?

DD: I mean, I talk about the speculative imagining of and influence of Zora Neale Hurston, just thinking of her at the time, being this trailblazing Black woman thinker, artist, southerner, who is riding the roads to the north, back to the south, over and over and over again. And for someone like Bernice at the time who moved due to tragedy, due to population, group population shifts at the time, with the migration, she’s just somebody that could have been witnessed, could have been inspiration, could have been model for how to move about the world, and yet not accessible wholly by Bernice.

And so I just think about her a lot. We thought about her a lot, rather, and she just holds a certain mystery, a certain interior rage and artistry and creativity about herself that a woman of the time, in Bernice, is doing in a much more compressed zone. Just domestically, just in the rearing of the children, just in the way that you present yourself, the beauty of your daily life, the beauty of hair, of all those little things. That’s artistry that doesn’t always get to be valued in the way that we do other things. So we thought about that a lot.

RM: The Washington family have talked a lot about this collection of plays by August Wilson that they want to make them all for big screen adaptations.

DD: He’s [Denzel Washington] going to do them all. They are going to do them all.

RM: I know you’re a big fan of these works. For yourself, is there a play or role, for yourself personally, that you want to see adapted from Wilson’s work, and is there a role there that you would love to play to continue being a part of this company in creating these legacy works?

DD: I mean, it would be an utter privilege to do any of them, but I will say that Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Gem of the Ocean are pretty compelling works for me. I’ve seen Gem of the Ocean once at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.

RM: What was that experience like?

DD: Crazy. (both laugh) Dear friend of mine, Tonya Jackson, played Black Mary. Just power, power, power on stage in her performance and in thinking about what Black Mary represents. August is always moving through spirituality. It’s always a component of it, and I think that’s critical. And that’s the kind of thematic thing I’m trying, I move through or want to learn from. And then Joe Turner, I’ve only read it. I don’t think I’ve even seen a reading of it. They both play to spirituality. So those things are critical.

RM: Thank you so much.

DD: Thank you Ryan.

The Piano Lesson is now playing in select theaters and will be available to stream exclusively on Netflix beginning November 23.