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
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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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