John David Washington Wrestles With Painful Past in ‘The Piano Lesson’ Trailer

John David Washington and his sister, played by Danielle Deadwyler, battle over a prized heirloom piano that tears their family apart in the trailer (below) for Netflix’s The Piano Lesson , which was released on Wednesday.

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“You feel that? That’s your family. That’s your blood,” David Washington, in the role of Boy Willie, tells a young woman (Skylar Smith) in the Charles household at one point in the trailer, as her hand runs over a piano decorated with the faces of family members carved by an enslaved ancestor.

The 130-year-old piano pits Boy Willie against his sister Berniece, played by Deadwyler, as he plans to sell the heirloom to build a family fortune, while his sister wants to hold onto the sole vestige of their family legacy.

In the middle, their uncle, played by Samuel L. Jackson, tries to mediate in a family battling to achieve a future by owning a plot of land its enslaved ancestors once worked on to preserve a past some want to forget. The Piano Lesson is directed and co-written by Malcolm Washington in his feature directorial debut, while his father, Denzel Washington, produces along with Todd Black.

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Malcolm Washington in a director’s statement said of his movie representing an eternal conflict among African American families: “Boy Willie’s plight felt like much of my own, while I shared Berniece’s sensibilities and understanding of the gravity of legacy. That like Berniece and Boy Willie, part of my purpose is to honor the lives and legacies of my parents and our ancestors. That I too come from a long line of women and men, some born into, then liberated from chattel slavery and that my life is possible because of the decisions, sacrifices and actions of all of them; that it’s paramount for me to do something meaningful with it. That, in the words of Boy Willie, ‘I’m supposed to build on what they left me.’’

The Piano Lesson , co-written by Virgil Williams, will hit select theaters on Nov. 8, before streaming on Netflix from Nov. 22. Jackson and David Washington reprise their roles from an earlier Broadway revival that co-starred Danielle Brooks.

The ensemble cast includes Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Erykah Badu, Jerrika Hinton, Gail Bean and Corey Hawkins.

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