Why Danielle Brooks Was ‘So Nervous’ About Starring in ‘The Piano Lesson’
variety.comMichael Appler When Tony and Emmy-nominee Danielle Brooks was 17 years old, at home in Greenville, S.C., she picked up a copy of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle,” a canon of 10 plays spanning the 20th century which chronicled African American life in its most vivid, lyrical and intimate settings yet written for the stage.
Sifting through the collection, she picked out “The Piano Lesson” and read it, thumbing across the names of African American actors and actresses whom she didn’t yet know. “Today is about preservation,” she told Variety on Thursday at the opening night of the first Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson,” in which Brooks stars as Berniece alongside Samuel L.
Jackson and John David Washington. “That’s what excited me about his work,” she said of the production, directed by Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson. “I want to preserve and give reverence to my family.
And not just my family, but the women who’ve come before me in this industry. I think about Alfre Woodard, about S. Epetha Merkerson, who originally played Berniece.
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