With “The Piano Lesson,” John David Washington had the rare acting opportunity to interpret August Wilson’s classic text for the stage in Broadway’s 2022 revival and now again in Netflix’s new feature adaptation, due Nov. 22.
Speaking with TheWrap as part of our TIFF 2024 interview and photo studio, Washington shared that playing Boy Willie on both stage and screen was “a liberating experience.” It helped, too, that he was led behind the camera by his brother Malcolm Washington, who makes his feature film directorial debut with “The Piano Lesson.”
“[It was] a liberating experience, given my reverence and my respect for the our filmmaker, for our director, our leader — what he envisioned, how he wanted to open up this story cinematically,” John David told TheWrap.
Speaking alongside co-stars Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, Ray Fisher and Michael Potts (the latter two of whom also starred in the Broadway revival), John David celebrated his brother’s vision of tying “the Wilsonians and the OGs who’ve done it before us” with younger audiences with a “a new lens.”
“That was exciting to be able to explore those new foundations and new frontier, in a way, through his eyes, through his lens,” John David said. “So basically, from stage to the film, it was more about really being present in the moment and what the reality of the situation is, not necessarily worrying about who you have to reach in back of the audience, how you have to your marks, necessarily. But it was more about whatever felt authentic and true at the time and space at that particular moment of the scene.”
Joining the cast in TheWrap’s studio was Malcolm Washington and his co-writer Virgil Williams. Speaking to the freedom he felt as a filmmaker in adapting Wilson for the screen, Malcolm echoed the desire to link new audiences to the classic material.
“When we approached the material, we knew that we wanted to take an approach that I hadn’t seen with some of the other takes on August Wilson’s work,” he told TheWrap. “And I think it’s always important to speak from your own personal truth and frame of story in the way that you see it.
“So when we started, I knew that we wanted to do something that would communicate to audiences that might not necessarily feel like they had access to the work itself, because you’ll hear the word reverence so much in speaking about this work, and we revere Mr. Wilson, and we revere this text. But we wanted to make it accessible because sometimes there’s a distance between what a young person — the distance between where they are and where the material is, and we wanted to bridge that gap and introduce this work to people that might see themselves in it, but would never give it a chance themselves to approach it.”
Watch TheWrap’s full Wrap Studio interview with “The Piano Lesson” cast and creatives in the video above.
