The movie version of The Piano Lesson –– based on August Wilson’s 1987 play of the same name and part of the playwright’s iconic 10-play American Century Cycle –– is the latest Wilson film produced by Denzel Washington and Todd Black.

The series of loosely interconnected dramas, which also includes Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, chronicles the African American experience decade by decade throughout the 20th century, roughly bookended by the birth of Richard Wright and the death of Thurgood Marshall. Wilson’s plays observe the advance and retreat of vast social changes from one largely fixed perspective: They’re mostly set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where Wilson grew up and which The New York Times has called “a bastion of Black history, arts and culture.” To generations of actors, the American Century Cycle has proved a rich, encyclopedic source of inspiration.

“I was a theater nerd growing up, and August Wilson was all I knew,” Corey Hawkins, who plays Avery in The Piano Lesson, told Netflix. “His American Century Cycle is incredible because they talk like us. They sound like us. You see your aunties, your uncles, you see yourself. … It’s just a beautiful celebration of not just Black culture but American culture.”

Who was August Wilson?

Almost 20 years after his death, Wilson remains one of the greatest playwrights of the United States. Recognized in his lifetime with heaps of awards — a Tony, two Pulitzers, seven New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards — his reputation continues to grow. Born in Pittsburgh in 1945, he wrote 16 plays; the American Century Cycle he’s now best remembered for kicked off in 1982 with the first production of Jitney, about a group of unlicensed cab drivers in the ’70s, and continued till 2005 with Radio Golf, which grapples with gentrification and political power in the ’90s. Others in the decalogy deal with everything from a man haunted in the 1910s by the bounty hunter who illegally enslaved him (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, 1986) to the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s (Two Trains Running, 1990). The Piano Lesson is set in the ’30s, in the latter half of the Great Depression.

Wilson is still best known for Fences, which made its Broadway debut in 1987 starring James Earl Jones; it won Wilson a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize. About a former Negro Leagues baseball star struggling in the ’50s with life after prison as a trash collector, it made its way off the Great White Way and into high school English classrooms, where it’s regularly taught alongside other landmarks of the American theater like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.

Just two weeks after Wilson died in 2005 from liver cancer, Broadway’s Virginia Theatre, where his King Hedley II ran in 2001, was renamed after him. Wilson joined a select group of modern figures who have received such an honor, reflecting his place in the pantheon of American theater — our homegrown Shakespeare, the Bard of Pittsburgh.

David Lee

What is Denzel Washington’s connection to August Wilson?

Washington has become Wilson’s most prominent champion. He met the playwright only once, on a rainy day in Seattle circa 2003, after Wilson expressed interest in casting the actor in Gem of the Ocean, the ninth Pittsburgh play Wilson wrote and the first chronologically. Washington went on to star in Fences’ first Broadway revival, in 2010, for which he and co-star Viola Davis both won Tonys. When the two reprised their roles for the movie version, in 2016, Washington also directed the film. 

“August Wilson is one of the greatest playwrights in American history, in world history,” Washington told Netflix. “It is a privilege and honor, responsibility and duty, and a joy to be a small part in keeping him alive.” 

In 2020, Netflix released Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, co-produced by Washington. Starring Davis as the real-life blues legend during a tumultuous recording session in Roaring ’20s Chicago (it’s the only play in Wilson’s Cycle not set in Pittsburgh), it was nominated for five Academy Awards.

The third and latest Wilson–Washington movie is The Piano Lesson: Co-produced by Denzel Washington and directed and co-written by Malcolm Washington in his feature directorial debut, it stars John David Washington, alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler, Michael Potts, and Hawkins. Much of the cast carries over from the play’s 2022 Broadway revival. 

“If you see the trajectory of Fences to Ma Rainey to The Piano Lesson, we have tried to make them cinematic, but still pay total respect to August Wilson's format as a play,” Black told Netflix. “And Malcolm clearly understood that.” 

Did Samuel L. Jackson know August Wilson?

The Piano Lesson, which made its Broadway premiere in 1990, won Wilson his second Pulitzer. In the film, Jackson plays Doaker Charles, the central family’s patriarch, but he played the starring role of Doaker’s nephew Boy Willie in the very first staging, at the Yale Repertory Theatre, in 1987. During rehearsals, Wilson was constantly making changes. “He wrote bigger and better speeches,” Jackson told Netflix. “He wrote on everything. He’d write on, like, napkins in a restaurant. It’s not like he walked around with a notebook he wrote in. He wrote on all kinds of stuff.

“When I played Boy Willie, Boy Willie was super loud and brash and all this other stuff. … So at certain points they were working on getting me to speak from my diaphragm. At Yale, whoever their voice coach was, they used to hang me upside down in gravity boots, and I had to do speeches. It was pretty fun.”

What’s The Piano Lesson?

It kicks off when a family clash over an heirloom piano explodes. The battle between brother and sister — one hopes to sell it, the other refuses to give it up — unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived and who defines a family legacy.

“You can read this play … to understand the chasm that the Black family has experienced as a result of the birthing of America, and how challenging it has been to remain together, and how challenging it is to go forward without reckoning with who you are, what you have been,” Deadwyler, who plays Berniece, said. 

“August Wilson has introduced me to a level of confidence as an artist, as an African American artist, that will forever be with me,” John David Washington told Netflix. “I’m very excited to experience the future of what I’m capable of because of what August Wilson has given me.”

“The works of August want you to dig into the greatest depths of yourself,” Deadwyler added. “There’s something that can be shifted and changed as a result of looking into the rawness of who you are, looking into the rawness of who your family is, looking into the rawness of your community, and mending it, alchemizing it [into] something transformative for everyone.”

Malcolm Washington first read the play in 2020, while he happened to be cataloging his family’s large collection of photos. “Reading the story really impacted me because I thought about my ancestors and their legacy, how the decisions they made have affected my present,” he told Netflix. “It felt like something I needed to spiritually engage with.”

Along with co-writer Virgil Williams, Washington dove headfirst into the material, comparing the adaptation process to “an archaeological expedition.” 

“Every family has a history, stories from the past that inform the present; an origin story,” he said in a director’s statement. “Ultimately this story is much bigger than me and my family — it, like the Black American experience, is an interconnected web of stories that span space and time. I hope that when audiences experience our film, they see themselves on the screen and hear the voices of their ancestors calling to them, offering peace and protection.”

The Piano Lesson is now streaming on Netflix. Listen to The Piano Lesson: The Official Podcast to learn more about Wilson and his legacy.