Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington on the Transformative Impact of ‘The Piano Lesson’
Despite Samuel L. Jackson being the one to originate the role of Boy Willie in the first production of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987, his wife LaTanya Richardson Jackson completely banned him from talking to John David Washington about taking on the role when they began working together on the 2022 Broadway revival that she directed. “So the whole time we did the play, I had no Boy Willie conversations with him. I didn’t tell him what to do,” said the actor to IndieWire during a recent phone conversation. “He had to find certain things on his own because Boy Willie is a complicated character and you have to have a certain amount of comfortability in your understanding of him to be able to get those things out of your mouth that he’s saying.”
Still, in speaking to both Jackson and Washington about said character, who is central to the new Netflix adaptation of Wilson’s work about a Black family from Mississippi stuck in a debate over what to do with an heirloom that represents their legacy, the actors have the shared experience of the role transforming their lives.
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“I’ll forever be grateful for August Wilson and this play and this movie,” Washington said during a Zoom call with IndieWire. “It helped me at least see the possibilities of the actor I want to be… This is something I’ve been wanting to do my whole life, and for the first time I’m actually seeing the actor I could maybe become one day. And I have August Wilson to thank for that.”
“The Piano Lesson,” the fourth play in Wilson’s “American Century Cycle,” which Oscar winner Denzel Washington has been personally committed to adapting into 10 films — though has no official deal in place to do so with Netflix or elsewhere — begins with Washington as Boy Willie traveling from the south up to Pittsburgh to visit his uncle Doaker (Jackson) and his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) hoping to sell the family piano they have in their house, with portraits of their family members carved into it, in order to use the money to buy the farm they once were sharecroppers on. His proposal is met with complete resistance from Berniece, even though she refuses to play the instrument, because of the sacrifices their father made to keep the heirloom within the family.
Boy Willie is a character who commands a lot of energy in order to continually make the case for his version of how to build upon the family legacy, so much so that Jackson said the first time he did it, “‘The Piano Lesson’ broke me.” Even though he knew that he was a holdover for Charles S. Dutton, who Wilson had always intended to play Boy Willie should the play transfer to Broadway, Jackson said “I totally felt like I was doing it so amazingly that even though it was written for Charles, they were going to say, ‘You know what, Charles, let him do it.’ And they didn’t.”
Becoming the understudy for Boy Willie on Broadway, almost never getting a chance to perform the role again, was a blow that led Jackson to his rock bottom that eventually led him to rehab. “All of the sudden, I was a clear-headed actor, because I hadn’t done anything without a substance in my body until ‘Jungle Fever,’ which was the first thing I did when I got out of rehab,” said the actor. “I have a very special place for that play and what it did to me, and the clarity and the change in my life and where it led me. It led me to this place, which is a great place.”
Already knowing the ways in which playing Boy Willie had affected his co-star, Washington said “as my experience was different, it was just as impactful in my life.” Though, again, there weren’t any specific conversations about how to play the particular role, the actor still eagerly sought out wisdom from Jackson and their co-star Michael Potts, another actor who had worked with Wilson and now plays Wining Boy in the film. “It was extremely beneficial for me to be inquisitive, to be curious about what their approach is to the work in general,” he said.
Being newer to theater, Washington recalled a time while rehearsing for the Broadway revival where he was trying out a unique bit of blocking in a scene with Jackson. “I was doing this spin move, it turned into a waltz or something, and then he just started busting out laughing,” he said. Jackson’s advice that day: “Boy, just turn and talk.”
However, the tables turned a bit when it came time to shoot the film, this time directed by Malcolm Washington, John David’s brother. “You have to set things on stage because people have got to set lights and you’ve got to have blocking. That’s very, very specific. [With films,] you got a camera that’s on wheels or a camera that’s on somebody’s shoulder, they can follow you around while you do shit,” said Jackson. “And John David took full advantage of that. So when he felt like experimenting, he just did it. He walked around and he did some different shit on the next take. You’re kind of like, ‘Oh, okay, fine, it’s just him.’ So you let it happen.”
In regard to working with the pair of brothers, Jackson joked “I always have a thing about whispering directors, when they go over and whisper something to the other actor and all of a sudden you’re sitting there, ‘What the fuck are they talking about?’ And then they go, ‘Action.’ And you go, ‘Oh, that’s what they told him to do? Is that what he thinks we’re supposed to be doing here?’ So you have to find ways because you have to be flexible in the cinematic sense.”
In his eyes, “The film is sort of enjoining you to watch them react to something as opposed to in the play, you can choose whatever you want to look at. So with that kind of freedom, it lends itself to try things and fail if not,” said Washington. “Because you always get another take and the play. It’s beginning, middle, and end. You gotta keep it going. So less pressure in that regard.”
It has been exciting for both actors to think about how their film adaptation “The Piano Lesson,” which premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival, created new opportunities for how the audience could experience their work. “You’ll see facial expressions that you never saw before or hear vocal inflections because the face looks a certain way that you weren’t able to see because the words were doing all the work,” said Jackson. “Now you have body language that can be examined in another way in terms of what a close up is in somebody’s face. And how they react to something that’s said or how they are saying things and what they look like when they’re saying, and the measure of sincerity of them saying it.”
Both cite Deadwyler’s performance as Berniece in the film as a prime example of how the story can be transformed by a cinematic lens. “??You’re going to hear a monologue, a beautiful monologue written by August Wilson, but the closeup is going to be on Danielle. So the audience are listening and affected by what’s being said, but we’re more now affected by how she’s taking it, her intake of what’s being said to her by her brother or her uncle,” said Washington.
“We want to honor the Wilsonians and the history of this text,” said Washington, in reference to the theater fans who treat the iconic playwright’s work with an almost religious reverence. “And yet, this film could be the nexus of the new generation to feel like they’re invited. Sometimes, like in sports, vets can be very hard, very critical on the new and not becoming contemporary players. And we wanted to avoid that. We wanted to include everybody and say, look at how the game has evolved. And this is unfortunately the same topical, antiquated, south American underbelly thoughts and harsh realities are still very relevant. And we can include a new interpretation of what we see in a very old problem through this film.”
Jackson, being a representative of the former camp, looks forward to seeing how his fellow Wilsonians respond to “The Piano Lesson” film. “It’d be interesting to hear what they have to say about it when they see it. Because it’s unlike some of the other things like [‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’] or even ‘Fences.’ It is not specifically the play.” But for him, the experience of coming back to the piece to play Doaker “is a sign of growth for me as an actor,” said Jackson. Though Boy Willie came to him in an unstable part of his life, viewers now see him playing the glue that keeps the family together. “I’m the person who escaped, even though I just work on a train and I go back and forth, but I live outside of the area now. I’ve seen another world and I live in a different way,” said Jackson. “So Doaker is an anchor and he’s an inspiration. So when things happen, everybody comes to Doaker. He’s that guy.”
“The Piano Lesson” opens in select theaters on Friday, November 8 before streaming on Netflix on November 22.
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