Danielle Deadwyler on What Hollywood and Cicadas Have in Common

Danielle Deadwyler tried to watch The Piano Lesson when the film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this fall. Though she’d already seen it alone in a screening room, she wanted to sit in with the first audience seeing the film, an adaptation of August Wilson’s 1987 play.

Deadwyler found herself starting to get emotional. “I’m watering, I’m welling up. And then it continues and I just [thought], No, no, no, I can’t do it,” she tells Little Gold Men.

Helmed by Malcolm Washington in his directorial debut, The Piano Lesson is a powerful, emotional tale about how one family’s history is carried down through the generations. Deadwyler, who got her start on the stage, has always considered Wilson’s plays to be a significant part of her own journey, having watched his works since her childhood in Atlanta. “August’s work in general has just defined my understanding of the way theater is to be performed,” she says. “This is just the work you want to do, the pivotal work that has the quintessential rhythms of Black culture, of Black language, of Black life.”

Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson centers on Deadwyler’s Berniece Charles, a widowed mother whose brother, Boy Willie Charles (played by John David Washington), comes to visit her home in Pittsburgh. He tries to convince her to sell their family’s piano, but this is no ordinary instrument—it’s a family heirloom that features designs carved by their ancestor, and carries much of the family’s history within it.

Deadwyler, known for starring in the 2022 biopic Till, speaks to Little Gold Men (listen below) about the family heirloom that inspired her on The Piano Lesson, shooting the film’s powerful final scene, and what exactly cicada sex has to do with Hollywood.

Vanity Fair: What is it about The Piano Lesson—the themes or topics it’s trying to explore—that you found most interesting?

Danielle Deadwyler: The root is in Black American art, which was influenced by Romare Bearden’s piece. It is the image of a woman teaching a child, which I think is really what drives August’s understanding of a lot of our experience. He grew up with a single black mother who labored for him and his siblings. That reverence is witnessed in the way that he writes certain Black women characters. The matriarch is the source of so much spiritual working. When we talk about spiritual work, it’s cultural work. It’s the making of Black life, of domestic life, of labor outside of the home. It’s the church. It’s the woods. It’s all of this stuff, and somebody is holding it. And thus far, matriarchs have been that archival specter. And when we lose those people, there’s a seismic shift in the way family works. There’s a seismic shift in the way community works. And we see that in the way this film has been set up.

Doing a project like this, how much time do you spend thinking about your own family history?

All the time, all the time. It’s about a family, period. Everybody understands family. Everybody understands what it means to lose critical people who’ve defined your life. Everybody knows what it means to fight amongst family. There are similar happenings in the film and in the play that harken back to straight-up conversations with family members. That’s why this film is for everybody. It’s not a Black American story only. It is specifically Black American.

Can you give me a specific example?

No, I’m not putting my family out there like that! [Laughs] But I will say when my grandmother passed like two years ago—she was my last living grandparent—I received some earrings of hers. So, when you talk about a keepsake, when you talk about an heirloom, we don’t always think of one grown-up thinking, Oh, I’m going to inherit this thing from them. Because a lot of the time, being working class families, what is there to give aside from the most glorious thing, which is memory and family? I hold those dear because they are special and they are personal and private. And yet I do have some earrings. Just some simple, beautiful gold hoops that signified to me her desire to present beauty, her longevity of labor and something that shows that she can put paint where it ain’t. She’s one of the coolest people I ever met and still is with me.

There is a very incredible, intense scene towards the end of the film. How do you prepare for a day like that, and how long did it take to shoot?

I don’t think you get ready. It’s a walking tension for me throughout the entirety of a production. The term “surrender” is massive. It was at least three or four days. It is multiple takes. It’s all day. So much of that is spirit. Speaking in tongues wasn’t in the script—it was a collective effort to conjure and to release. With the dynamic nature in which Malcolm shot it, you just have to be available for it all. I had to be constantly allowing myself to give over, to give over, to give over.

Can I ask you something bluntly?

I love directness.

You’re very intelligent and thoughtful, and there must be parts of the Hollywood machine that drive you crazy as someone who is very smart.

You know what? I think knowledge comes from everywhere. There’s a specific knowledge that is achievable in Hollywood, it has a rich history. It is not the defining nature of my craft, as I live in Atlanta. There are a lot of smart, lovely people who are often being funneled through a certain pipeline, and they don’t have to be. And it’s an effort to get outside of that. I think I’m always making the effort to hear the voices that are not always heard, oppressed voices, marginalized voices—and I just have to work a little harder sometimes when I’m moving through these “Hollywood machine” spaces. But always trying to hear what little gem may be in the glimmering lights. It’s like being a cicada, during cicada sex season.

You’re going to have to explain that one a little bit more.

So when we were filming Woman in the Yard, which is a Blumhouse film that’s coming out next year, the trillion cicadas were coming. And I read this article about cicadas and what they do. At the end of the day, it’s a big freak fest – it’s just time to have sex and multiply. And they’re making all that damn noise because somebody’s trying to attract the right one. And the female cicadas, their job is to make the right choice because they could choose a zombie. There are cicadas who are fine and normal and you should mate with them, and then there are zombie cicadas who didn’t get to mate and are losing their minds because they don’t have anybody to love on and repopulate with. That’s kind of what that is: it’s trying to find the right mates, because it’s a lot of noise and it’s a lot of zombies.

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