“It's all a little overwhelming. When you do something that's so personal to you, it feels like you're only doing it for yourself or your people. But then you're reminded that this is going to exist in the world,” says Malcolm Washington of his directorial debut, The piano lessonThe adaptation of August Wilson's play of the same name screened at the Telluride Film Festival before bowing to its largest audience to date at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
In 2020, Washington, a former student at the American Film Institute's famed directing program, was looking to write his first feature film, writing original screenplays, when he first read Wilson's work. Part family melodrama, part ghost story, The piano lesson It centers on the Charles family, whose members gather to discuss a precious family heirloom, a hand-carved piano depicting generations of the family.
“I wanted to make a film for a long time, and when I got there The piano lessonIt's not that I was looking for it. But when I read it, with the life I was in, it just jumped out at me,” she says, “You have to think about the decisions your great-great-grandmother made to put you in this position. Sit down and think about it! This upcoming film is a representation of a long process in which I have struggled and confronted the stories of my ancestors.”
Son of Pauletta and Denzel Washington, Malcolm is not the first member of his family to adapt Wilson. Denzel directed an adaptation of Wilson's novel Fences for the screen in 2016 and later produced an adaptation of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom for Netflix.
In preparation for The piano lessonwhich he co-wrote with Virgil Williams, Washington immersed himself in the history and culture of the 1930s, the setting of the play. He also spoke with surviving relatives of Wilson, who died in 2005 at age 60. Outside inspirations ranged from the films of Andrei Tarkovsky to the paintings of Kerry James Marshall.
“I was trying to convince people to do the film. I went to Sam Jackson's house and brought this huge stack of images and stories and things I had collected about what I thought the film could be. There's a section where I talk about the first time I saw Kerry James Marshall's Invisible Man series,” Washington recalls. The paintings are rendered in a dark color palette that requires the viewer to get up close to the work to see the actual image. “I was talking to Mr. Jackson about when I first saw that painting and how it was a big influence and how I wanted to approach this work where you might have expectations but when you get up close, it reveals itself.”
In Washington, The piano lesson it was similar: it's a story that the audience can get more out of the more they look at it.
The proposition worked and Jackson agreed to star, alongside a main cast that included Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Corey Hawkins, Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington.
Much of the cast was already intimate with the playwright. Identifying the cast of The Piano Lesson’s connections to Wilson’s original play and his extended oeuvre probably requires a flowchart. “Sam Jackson and Mr. Potts are like our patriarchs. They’re like August Wilson’s stewards. They’re OG Wilsonians,” says Washington. Jackson understudied in the play’s first Broadway run after creating it at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987. Just a year before the revival, John David and Fisher made their respective Broadway debuts in a 2022 revival of the play that also stars Jackson and Potts.
Washington’s older brother, John David, plays the pompous Boy Willie, who is in favor of selling his piano to finance his dream of owning a farm. Of working with his brother, the director says, “When you get the opportunity to make a movie, you say, ‘OK, let me throw everything I have into it.’ And I was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to be nice and I’ll wait a couple of years.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, I’m making a movie, are you up for it?’ He’s someone who’s seen my work and knows me as an artist before anyone else.” John David, who has worked with directors such as Christopher Nolan and David O. Russell, gladly accepted the role.
Production took place in Georgia, with interiors, particularly the family living room that houses the titular piano, built on soundstages. For exteriors, filming moved to Canton, Georgia, where production designer David Bomba constructed a Pittsburgh street corner based on research he and Washington did while walking around Wilson's old neighborhood.
Many directors who adapt plays for the screen talk about the need to break out of the confined space the original work occupied, beyond single, static sets. Washington turned to his actors to make his film feel expansive.
Washington quotes his movie hero, Paul Thomas Anderson: “He once said something like, 'You know, everybody talks about sets.' He said, 'The best set is a great actor,'” Washington says. “There's nothing a big set can do that's like watching a 10-page monologue by Samuel L. Jackson.”
At the end of The piano lesson — once the demons, both literal and metaphorical, have been exorcised and the family has come to terms with their past and present — the screen fades to black and a small sign appears with the words “For Mama.” The director’s mother, Pauletta, plays Mama Ola in the film, the onscreen mother of Deadwyler’s Bernice and John David Washington’s Boy Willie.
“I think of Bernice as a mother, her relationship with her mother, the power that mothers have over all of us, and the hope that they convey to the next generation,” says Malcolm Washington.
Regarding the title, she says: “We had to fight to get it, and once we got it, we organized this screening in New York for the cast and crew. Erykah Badu [who plays a singer in the film] He's next to my mom and my mom is already crying because the end of the movie really touched her. I said, 'Mom, you have to look! Look at the screen!' Then she sees it and she falls into my lap and we just hold each other.”
Speaking of his mother, the director recalls conversations he had with Constanza Romero, Wilson's widow. Washington recalls, “Miss Constanza would talk about how, when she was working on her play, she would look back and say, 'I hope my mother would be proud.'”