Married to Their Work: Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson on Bringing ‘The Piano Lesson’ Back to Broadway
variety.comBrent Lang Executive Editor Samuel L. Jackson had his marching orders. So when actor John David Washington approached him for tips about playing Boy Willie, a role Jackson originated in the 1987 production of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” he clammed up. “I was specifically told by the director not to give him advice,” Jackson says. “John David asked several times, but when he realized that I was not allowed to help him, he stopped asking.” The director, in this case, is LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who also happens to be Jackson’s wife, as well as the first woman to oversee a production of Wilson’s work on Broadway.
The two are teaming up on the hotly anticipated revival of the classic drama, only this time Sam is playing Boy Willie’s uncle, Doaker Charles.
It marks his first time on Broadway since 2011’s “The Mountaintop,” in which he played Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and LaTanya’s first time directing after a run of acclaimed stage performances, including the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” and 2018’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “I’m always open to working onstage,” Sam says. “But I was not looking for it.
The fortunate thing was they got the right director who was able to convince me to do it.” “The Piano Lesson” unfolds in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression and follows an argument between Boy Willie and his sister, Berniece (played in the revival by Danielle Brooks), over whether to sell a family heirloom — a piano with carvings made by an enslaved ancestor.
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