Wrestling with the ghosts of ‘The Piano Lesson’

The piano on the set of “The Piano Lesson” was not a mere prop. It could be played and the cast members often did. It was adorned with pictures of the Washington family and their ancestors. It was, John David Washington jokes, “No. 1 on the call sheet.”

“We tried to haunt the piano itself, to charge it with that kind of spirit,” says Malcolm Washington, the film’s director and John David’s brother.

In “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s 1987 play, the piano is a central symbol of heritage, the past and survival. In 1930s Pittsburgh, it sits, unplayed, in the home of Berniece Charles ( Danielle Deadwyler ), having been passed down as a family heirloom from the days of slavery. But Berenice’s visiting brother, Boy Willie ( John David Washington ), wants to sell it to buy the Mississippi land upon which their ancestors once toiled as slaves.

“The Piano Lesson,” which is currently playing in theaters and debuts Friday on Netflix, is an impassioned family drama but it is also a profound ghost story. For the Charles family, wrangling over the piano is a reckoning with their family’s past, and the legacy of slavery. At its bone-rattling crescendo, it’s an exorcism.

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“It’s an exorcism and a possession,” says Deadwyler. “You’re releasing the thing that never worked and inviting in the thing that was always present but you might not have known.”

Adapting “The Piano Lesson,” a play about ancestors and heritage, was fittingly a work of family. It’s the third in a sterling string of Wilson adaptations produced by Denzel Washington, following “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” But it’s the first Washington mostly left to his family to make.

“Costanza, August’s widow, came to me I don’t know how many years ago and asked me to shepherd these plays. I said, ‘I’m the man for the job,’” Washington said an interview alongside producer Todd Black. “So I’ve been more of an administrator. I read the play a couple times to think about how can we get this made, is this a movie? In this case, a week or so into shooting, I was like, ‘There’s nothing for me to do. This kid knows what he’s doing. He’s done his homework. I’m just hanging around.’”

If Denzel Washington has been moved to carry on the tradition of Wilson by a sense of legacy, it’s something he passes down in “The Piano Lesson.” The film marks the directorial debut of Malcolm, 33, who also co-wrote the script with Virgil Williams.

John David Washington, the “BlacKkKlansman” and “Tenet” star, made his Wilson debut in a 2022 Broadway production of “The Piano Lesson,” playing Boy Willie. That production also featured Samuel L. Jackson, who originated the role of Boy Willie in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, playing Berniece and Boy Willie’s uncle, Doaker Charles, a role he carries over in the film.

“You have all these great artists playing these notes – you have the OGs, the Wilsonians, playing it,” says John David. “Then you have the newcomers playing it. You start jamming together and you find it together.”

In Wilson, there’s no greater musicality than the language, the blues poetry of Wilson’s slang-drenched rhythms. The brash, fast-talking Boy Willie, in particular, is a verbal force — one that John David was enthralled by.

“It feels freaking so good when the truth is coming out and you know the truth is coming out and you’re discovering new meanings in these monologues that you go over and over in your head,” says John David. “When it’s happening, it’s a beautiful feeling. I live for those moments.”

For the actors, finding the music of “The Piano Lesson” meant channeling generations worth of pain and perseverance in Black American life. Much of it they understood instinctually. Some of it they found together.

“Berniece has a massive amount of weight and put on top of that is grief and loss and longing,” says Deadwyler, the “Till” star. “Those are things that have been with me and in women I’ve witnessed all my life. You think about the lives these women have lived and you carry it and you bear it.”

The cast and filmmakers were also mindful of a legacy of performance they were working in. When Harry Belafonte died during the shoot, Malcolm played a song of his on set. The day before “The Piano Lesson” played at the Toronto International Film Festival, James Earl Jones, who starred in the original production of “Fences,” died.

“I didn’t grow up watching movies. And I didn’t get in the business for movies. I wanted to be James Earl Jones,” says Denzel. “I was thinking of theater. To be honest with you, when I started, there weren’t a whole lot of Black people for me to be like. We weren’t the leading men.”

For Denzel, August Wilson became a lifeblood.

“These are the best roles around,” he says. “Everybody wants ‘em. I want ’em.”

In the film’s dramatic third act, when the supernatural enters, Deadwyler could feel presences in the room. This is when “The Piano Lesson” quakes open with all of the pain and tragedy it has been building toward. The walls — hung with photos of the actors’ own relatives — shake. Deadwyler, Malcolm says, was gone. She was somewhere else.

“I do recall when the ancestors were coming into the room,” Deadwyler says. “My eyes are closed a lot, but people carry energy. And I knew when they came in. The breath shifts.”