‘The Piano Lesson’ Has Been a Family Affair Says Pauletta Washington

EXCLUSIVE:  Pauletta Pearson Washington says that the film adaptation of August Wilson’s acclaimed play The Piano Lesson has been a family affair. “All my babies are involved in this,” the actor, musician and philanthropist declares.  

“My son directed it,” she says pointing to filmmaker Malcolm Washington, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Virgil Williams.

“And John David’s in it,” Washington adds, referring to her eldest child, the actor John David Washington.

“And so is Olivia, we play the same role at different ages,” she says proudly of daughter Olivia Washington. 

“And here’s Katia,” who was seated by her at a cocktail party hosted by Netflix to celebrate the streamer’s roster of movies being screened at the Telluride Film Festival.

 Katia is an executive producer of The Piano Lesson. 

Her husband Denzel Washington is a producer of The Piano Player, and with producing partner Todd Black, the Oscar-winning actor has pledged to bring to bring to the screen the entirety of Wilson’s ten-part American Century Cycle of plays.

Thus far Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – and now The Piano Lesson– have found their way to the screen.

It has not been officially confirmed or announced, but I understand that the next of Wilson’s plays to be realized on celluloid is likely to be Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which was first staged in 1988.

Denzel Washington and Todd Black will produce the drama that’s set in Pittsburgh in 1917. It’s about a man returning to his family and hometown having spent seven years enslaved on a chain gang.

“They couldn’t have chosen a better person than my husband to make sure all the works are given respect,” Pauletta Washington tells us.

That statement belies Ms. Washington’s own involvement in the project. “Pauletta’s the queen of The Piano Lesson,” Black acknowledges.

Son, John David echoes that sentiment saying that his mother “is the glue that holds it all together.”

John David says that his mother encouraged the family to visit her hometown in Newton, North Carolina. “That’s where her family’s from and what we discovered there influenced a lot of what my brother did on the film.”

Malcolm Washington says that The Piano Lesson honors his mother’s ancestors. “I look at photographs of my grandmother and I see the faces of my mother and my sisters and my brother.”

Pauletta says that there are “definitely” ghosts and spirits from her family in the film.

The central plot line of The Piano Lesson concerns a piano, a treasured family heirloom; an instrument that’s haunted by the two Black men who were killed attempting to secure it for future generations.

Ms. Washington is an accomplished classically trained pianist and vocalist. In her youth she broke racial barriers in the then-segregated south when she performed recitals in prestigious piano competitions.

She says that she doesn’t play professionally or in public anymore. “I don’t play much now and if I do I play for myself ,” she says.

“Art is in my bones, and to see that the children, my babies, have taken up the arts is moving to me, “ she says visibly thrilled to be surrounded by three of her children here in Telluride.

Daughter Olivia is starring in the London production of Jeremy O. Harris’ drama Slave Play and wasn’t able to join the clan.

The family’s patriarch was away working but as Malcolm put it, “he knows and sees all of our work.”

Danielle Deadwyler stars alongside John David Washington in The Piano Lesson, playing siblings who both claim the right to decide what happens to the piano in question. 

Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts and Stephan James also star.

Netflix will release the  film into select theaters in the United States and the United Kingdom on November 8.

The streamer will launch it on its service on November 22.