Malcolm Washington Plays His Own Tune
The Piano Lesson, American director Malcolm Washington's feature-length adaptation of August Wilson's play of the same name, is coming to Netflix next Friday.
It's not the first time that the story has been brought to the screen – a 1995 made-for-TV film still holds up thanks to a brilliant performance by Alfre Woodard – but Washington, son of Denzel and Pauletta, is sure he lends a new perspective to the affecting account of legacy grief.
“I wanted to reflect my generation and our concerns,” the 33-year-old Californian tells me in Ham Yard Hotel in London's West End earlier this week before a screening of the film – his true directorial debut – at the Barbican. “In my time, I've seen such a shift in the consideration of mental health and of inherited trauma. I think we're processing it in a new way than my parents' generation did and my grandparents' generation did. So, I knew that making this movie from the voice of my generation would result in a different outcome than previous productions on screen and stage.”
Set in Pittsburgh during the fallout of The Great Depression, The Piano Lesson centres on the Charles family in the home of Doaker Charles, a character played in Malcolm's version by Samuel L. Jackson.
Doaker's niece and nephew – Berniece and Boy Willie, excellently played by Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington (Malcolm's brother), respectively – are arguing over their late father's piano that's stationed in their uncle's living room. Berniece is uncompromisingly attached to the family heirloom that's adorned with carvings of their enslaved ancestors; her brother, on the other hand, is eager to sell the instrument. He has plans to use the funds to reclaim the land that his father and his forbearers worked on as enslaved people, so that their generation can work towards a brighter future.
Guests of the home get caught up in the conflict. There's Boy Willie's friend, Lymon (played by Ray Fisher); local preacher and courter of Berniece, Avery Brown (played by Corey Hawkins); Doaker's brother – so, yes, other uncle to Boy Willie and Berniece – Wining Boy (played by Micheal Potts); and Berniece's 11-year-old daughter who resides at the property with her mother, Maretha (played by Skylar Aleece Smith).
Fisher, Jackson, Potts and John David Washington reprise their roles they claimed in the 2023 Broadway revival. Malcolm saw the play many times in support of his brother.
Malcolm's twin sister Olivia, and his mother, Pauletta, also make cameo appearances in the movie. They share the role of Mama Ola, Berniece and Boy Willie's late mother who appears in flashback scenes.
Denzel, too, was involved as a producer. And Malcolm's other sister, Katia (executive producer). Not to mention Denzel's frequent collaborator, Todd Black (also, producer), and Virgil Williams (co-writer, who also wrote Denzel's 2021 flick, A Journal for Jordan).
'Was it always to be a family affair?', I ask. “No, definitely not,” he says. “I think that's the last thing that any of us wanted to be real with you.
“It developed organically as, when you start something like this, you're not trying to force yourself and your family into it, you're just trying to listen to the movie and do what's best for it. But what became so important in making this film was community building. In our production – our cast, our crew; Danielle, Cory etc. – we really built a community. And bringing my family into that was part of that.”
Malcolm, Denzel and co. began developing the project alongside the theatre production, but says – despite the carry over of cast and parallels in staging – they were “always going in their own direction”.
After all, Malcolm is intimately familiar with the Wilson play, one of ten works in
his Pittsburgh Cycle – a series that explores the experience of being African-American in each decade of the 20th century.
It was his dad who introduced him to the Pittsburgh-born playwright.
“August's legacy has been so important to him, the two of them are braided together,” he reckons. “It was someone who we always knew about, someone we recognised as a great of American literature. So, getting to work on this together meant bringing us closer to one of our heroes. It's a voice we want to big up and uphold.”
By no coincidence, Denzel has been a driving force in the two other most-recent adaptations of Pittsburgh Cycle stories. He directed and starred in Fences. He co-produced Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe (a luminary of American theatre) for Netflix.
“I think it's dope that each film represents the filmmaker in so many ways,” he says, reflectively. “I represent a different generation and vision, and I hope you can see that in The Piano Lesson.”
Would he do another one?
Probably not, but for good reason.
“I hope they keep getting new voices, different voices, varied voices to do the rest of them, and have this tapestry of Black artists of this time working on them.”
For the night's Q+A screening, Malcolm wore the same self-styled ensemble he was clad in when I met him. Since this wasn't his original plan, I've decided to assume it's because I remarked, when grabbing a photo with the up-and-comer, that it's “a look worth seeing”.
The 'fit goes like this.
Shoes: A pair of Paraboots, which he tells me he wears often, only really swapping them out for Nike Cortezs. He tells me that he was a “big SB Dunk guy” whilst admiring my Wu-Tang Dunks before he got out of the game when it became unlocalised.
Trousers: Some straight-leg, dark-blue jeans by A.P.C.
Shirt: A white with blue stripes button-up by Bottega Veneta. He's been “fucking with Bottega a lot, lately.” He also likes Loewe shirts – that was an option he packed.
Jacket: a modish white and blue worker/barn jacket by Prada.
Hat: A fitted red Golf Le Fleur* hat. He's a big fan of Golf Le Fleur* founder Tyler, the Creator's aesthetic. When talking fashion, he tells me he tried to secure a piece from the musician's collab with Louis Vuitton but it “sold out too fast”. “Trust me, I hit him, but even he couldn't hook me up. He couldn't even get stuff for himself.”
Tie: It's vintage, from a spot in Los Angeles called Reese's Vintage Pieces. “It's like 30-45 minutes from my house – it's just run by this group of cool, eccentric guys that have this incredible vintage collection and it's all sorted by year. They have the twenties/thirties/forties suiting in there and everything.”
He wonders if the film's costume designer, Francine Jamison-Tanchuck, visited that very spot to find pieces for The Piano Lesson as “all the clothes that Danielle Deadwyler wears is all vintage thirties clothes.” The guys also wore a lot of vintage: Samuel L. Jackson's suit was from the thirties, too.
He's excited to check out the vintage stores that London has to offer.
“I hadn't really spent much time here before summer. I came because my sister was doing a play [Slave Play] here in the West End, and I spent some time in Paris too. But I'm really rockin' with London right now.”
He's not in the capital for long this time round, but plans to come back soon to revisit Stork (the “incredible” pan-African restaurant in Mayfair that his friend Ayo introduced him to), go shopping (I've already sent him a requested list of “good menswear spots” he's promised to visit) and discover the music scene.
“There's such a history between White British artists loving Black American soul music. I remember seeing a Aretha Franklin documentary a few years ago, and there was a part when she's singing in a church and Mick Jagger is like the only white guy in the crowd,” he remembers with a giggle.
This curious cross-Atlantic connection gave Malcolm confidence that British audiences would understand a key scene in his film in which Doaker, Lymon, Wining Boy and Boy Willie join in chorus to sing a prison work song titled “Berta, Berta”.
“The Berta sequence encapsulates what the movie is in so many ways – a story of our past trauma and how process it. And the Black men of this era of the thirties, they didn't necessarily have the words for it but they process it through this kind of spiritual communion. There's so much history that's implied there, and so much feeling that's kind of just felt, but it's not directly spoken”.
The other musical sequence in the film is quite different – a moment of pizzaz that brightens up the 125 minute run-time.
We get Erykah Badu as a singer called Lucille performing in a venue inspired by the historic Crawford Grill jazz spots in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. “They were like the watering holes of the neighbourhood,” Malcolm informs me.
The idea for the segment was serendipitous: Badu's “Green Eyes” played whilst Malcolm was writing, which ignited him to reach out to the singer since the “smoky jazz club vibe” convinced him she'd be perfect addition to the film.
“I was like, 'It would be so tight to get Erykah Badu.' Everyone was like, 'Yeah, it would be tight' but nobody thought we could do it.' But I went through the channels and I just called her and I was like, 'Hey, would you be interested in doing something like this?' And she was like, 'Hell yeah, I love doing characters'. She came with this whole story and I was like, 'Yeah, let's do it.'”
“She lives such a cool existence. She's connected to so many people, spiritually. She's one of the best people, the best spirits, I've ever got to be around. I was so blessed that she came and worked on our project.”
The film also ends on a song: “Wither” by Frank Ocean. It works thematically and sonically, and also eases the audience back into the 21st Century.
“That Frank song is one of my favourite songs of all time,” says Malcolm. “That song can bring me to tears. I didn't have an end song... I didn't know what to do. We were thinking about doing original stuff... And you know what, I just thought to myself, 'This is my favourite song, let me just put it in there and see how it fits,' and it just played so perfectly. Who doesn't want to listen to Frank on the way out?”
Just as the soothing sounds of Ocean drift in, the words “for mama” surface on the screen.
Denzel had something to say about that. “He was like, 'Why don't it say 'For Dad'?'” he laughs. His father recently called him out as a mama's boy an interview with ExtraTV, and Malcolm doesn't disagree.
“My mum has done so much for all of us. When my dad was off making movies, it was my mum that held us down – took us to watch stuff, took us to read stuff, helped us develop our consciousness and our creativity. She really fostered that in us."
It's a credit designed not just to honour his mum, but all mums, hence his choice to abstain from using her name. “I wanted to make that much bigger than our family.
“We all come from somewhere and I hope that when the movie ends you think of the line of women you come from and honour them in some way. ”
The Piano Lesson is streaming on Netflix from Friday 22 November.
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