While she’s a regular fixture of A-list film projects these days, Atlanta’s Danielle Deadwyler got her acting start on local stages, debuting professionally in 2009′s “For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” at True Colors Theatre Company. Later, she won a Suzi Bass Award for her work in Alliance Theatre’s “The C.A. Lyons Project.”
Her stage work across the city has forever shaped her life and career, she said: “It informs everything that I do.”
Deadwyler is part of an excellent ensemble in the new film “The Piano Lesson,” streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 22 after a limited theatrical release. The film, based on the play by legendary playwright August Wilson, is the directorial debut of Malcom Washington (who also adapted the script with Virgil Williams) and stars much of the cast from the acclaimed 2022 Broadway revival — Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington and Michael Potts. It’s something of a family affair for the Washingtons — father Denzel, who is one of the producers, also produced 2020′s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and directed and starred in 2016′s Oscar-winning “Fences.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
“The Piano Lesson” charts the Charles family, circa 1936 Pittsburgh after the Great Depression, and an argument between a brother and sister over what to do with the family piano, which has moments of family history carved into it. Boy Willie (John David Washington) is a sharecropper who’d like to sell it in order to purchase land where his elders were slaves, while sister Berniece (Deadwyler) wants to save it.
Understanding Berniece’s arc was important for Deadwyler. Besides the spiritual journey of the character, there’s a personal and erotic one.
“She is a traditionalist, engaging in the prospect of this gentleman getting angry — a pastor with roots similar to her — and yet she has a tension in moving forward in any way with him and has this eruptive desire and flame,” Deadwyler said on a recent publicity stop for the film. “It’s not purely sexual, but it is very much what is driving you into a greater sense of your own personal life force. Those are just two of the avenues used to craft her arc and her (experience). That duality is really critical in thinking of Berniece.”
Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Working on the film was deeply rewarding for Deadwyler, especially with the established cast. Yet she has spent much of her time with the director. “It was the most beautiful experience. It was deeply collaborative. Malcolm and I sat down and got into the spirituality of the piece — where Berniece travels. We dug into the longing and grief and loss she is taken by.”
Morehouse College hosted a special screening of the film recently with Deadwyler, Malcom Washington, John David Washington (who played football there) and Jackson, a Morehouse graduate. A Q&A was moderated by Atlanta’s Kenny Leon, who staged several August Wilson productions while heading up True Colors Theater Company and co-founded the National August Wilson Monologue Competition in 2007.
While both John David Washington and Jackson were involved in the recent Broadway revival, Deadwyler was not. As such, she knew she had to overprepare and, in essence, get ready to do a play. “I had to live, eat, breathe the words and have a speculative (imagination) on what would inspire Berniece — Zora Neale Hurston — and how she was moving through the world . . . while applying a historical analysis and theatrical fundamentals. Having all of that knowledge coalesce to make a collaborative process with myself and the cast, that all goes into making the intimacies of a cinematic experience.”
“The Piano Lesson” was filmed in Atlanta and Macon last year. For director Washington, the Georgia capital was a natural place to film. “We are telling the story of a culture, of a community, and Atlanta in our history is such a crucial part of that,” he said. “Atlanta is like the mecca. Outside of the world of the movie, there are so many incredible (artists) working here, and being able to bring those people together was amazing. And in the world of the movie, there is so much of our story as Black people in America that come to the South, and we are telling that story of migration. To be able to shoot it here and have that soil and dirt here and connect to it brought a dynamism to the film.”
Credit: David Lee/Netflix
Credit: David Lee/Netflix
Deadwyler’s breakthrough Hollywood season was in 2021, when she appeared in the Emmy-nominated “Station Eleven” and the western “The Harder They Fall.” She received rave reviews the next year for her performance in the made-in-Georgia drama ”Till” and was considered a lock for an Oscar nomination. That did not happen, but she is a surefire Best Supporting Actress candidate for “The Piano Lesson,” and award pundits have Deadwyler as a co-favorite in the category alongside Zoe Saldana’s turn in “Emilia Perez.”
She will be seen in the action thriller “Carry On” in December and next year in “The Woman in the Yard” and “Otis & Zelma.”
While her first discipline was dance, Deadwyler quickly learned that, ultimately, dance and theater are twins. And theater is still her guiding light.
“(Theater) taught me rigor, how to be a professional,” she said. “Every sense of being an actor has been rooted in people who have engaged in it over and over again — folks I have watched do it, the way they spit when they talk from the stage. That is an integral sensory component of what it meant to be an actor in a way I understood. I want to see that and feel that and need to understand that passion. And that is all from theater — performance art, film, TV — anything I have had the opportunity to present. Nothing about how I behave in any discipline is not coming from theater.”
FILM PREVIEW
“The Piano Lesson”
Streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 22
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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