Get the latest gossip
‘The Piano Lesson’: Read The Screenplay That Found The Right Key For August Wilson’s Pulitzer-Winning Play
The Piano Lesson, adapted from the August Wilson play, is directed by Malcolm Washington who co-wrote the screenplay with Virgil Williams.
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the awards season’s buzziest movies continues with Netflix ‘s The Piano Lesson, the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson play that was directed by Malcolm Washington in his feature-helming debut. Malcolm and Williams teamed to work on the script (“some days with a pickaxe, others with the soft bristles of a small brush delicately unearthing precious gems,” Malcolm says) to get to the root of Wilson’s play, the latest in the playwright’s Century Cycle series to be adapted to the screen. (Previous cycle plays included Netflix’s own Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 2020, and 2016’s Fences, adapted by the playwright himself before his death in 2005 and directed by Denzel Washington, earning four Oscar noms including for the screenplay, and a Best Actress win for Viola Davis; Denzel and Todd Black produced both Fences and Piano Lesson.)
Or read this on Deadline