Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
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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.
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. 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 something for me, Bernice.
Play something for me, Bernice. Play 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 cost your mama. 17 years worth of cold nights in an empty bed for what? For a Peter Allen? For a piece of wood? 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?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Danielle Deadwyler and what role does she play?
0:50–1:25
2
What themes are explored in The Piano Lesson?
1:25–7:19
3
How does the piano symbolize family history?
7:19
4
What is the significance of the Great Migration in the story?
5:50–9:16
5
What insights does Danielle Deadwyler share about her character?
9:16–11:45
6
How does The Piano Lesson address cultural growth in the Black community?
11:45–15:09
7
What was August Wilson's relationship with his mother?
15:09–17:50
8
How does the cast approach the character of Bernice?
17:50–19:14
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The New Yorker Radio Hour
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