Samuel L. Jackson on Revisiting the Broadway Play That Landed Him in Rehab

The roots of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winner The Piano Lesson run deep for Samuel L. Jackson.

He first portrayed Boy Willie in the play's world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1987. "It was great. I only did it because Charles Dutton was doing Crocodile Dundee 2 at the time, so I had the opportunity to create Boy Willie. I became very attached to it—probably a little too much," Jackson said at a news conference in New York City on September 7. "So by the time the play traveled and came to Broadway and I was an understudy, I was pretty much devastated that I wasn't going to make my Broadway debut, drowning myself in a drug-fueled kind of craziness and ended up in rehab, which, you know, started a whole other journey for me."

The actor famously made his comeback with 1994's Pulp Fiction, and he has been one of Hollywood's most bankable leading men ever since.

This time around, John David Washington (Tenet, BlacKkKlansman) will star as Boy Willie, in his Broadway debut. He likens the process of sharpening his chops for the Great White Way to grad school: "I feel like I'm becoming a different artist, an artist I've wanted to be. All that comes with that, the good, the bad and the weird, it's all informing me as an artist."

Says Jackson of working alongside Washington in a role he once played, "It's kind of interesting to come back in this way...and to listen to John David create Boy Willie and find my way into that particular character, my character, now, in terms of who I am, how I've matured as an actor and being able to step into it and support the play, the words of the play."

The plot of The Piano Lesson revolves around a family heirloom: Siblings Boy Willie (Washington) and Berniece (Orange Is the New Black's Danielle Brooks) disagree about whether to keep or sell a piano etched with African carvings. Jackson plays their uncle—and intermediary—Doaker.

Wilson's widow and literary executor, Constanza Romero Wilson, who was also present at the news conference, described the play as being about asking the question, "What do you do with your legacy?" She added, "That one piano symbolizes us Americans: We can't extricate the African history from our own history in this country. It is the combination of both that makes it so beautifully diverse and so beautifully interesting."

Jackson is not the only one who has a prior connection to the play, which is part of August Wilson's American Century Cycle, a collection of 10 plays. LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson's wife, directs—she is the first woman to direct a Wilson play on Broadway—and was herself a cast member in the 2009 production of Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. John David Washington's father, Denzel Washington, won a Tony for the 2010 stage production of Fences, which is also part of the Cycle, and produced, directed and starred in the 2016 film adaptation, which got four Oscar noms and secured one win, for Viola Davis.

Brooks, too, has a previous relationship with the material. "This role means a lot to me," she said. "This was what I used, this monologue of Berniece, to get into Juilliard to start my journey as an actress. So to get to play Berniece in totality now, with the leadership of LaTanya, getting to learn from Sam, getting to work with my brother John D...it's really a gift."

Asked about what it's like to direct her husband, Richardson Jackson told Newsweek, "Because I've been with him for 53 years, it's become a coded situation to talk to him. It's tender, I'm not going to say that it's not," she said. "But we're there to service August's work, so I am approaching it from the standpoint of, I'm a servant here to lift what August has given us."

She added about her husband, "He is very determined about what he knows and I must agree, he knows a lot, not more than me, but it's different.... I'm just trying to let him be him but also usher him along, and he's been very good about that. Vocal, but at least he'll do it."

Jackson's response? "Sort of what she said."

Richardson Jackson previously won a Tony for her performance in 2014's A Raisin in the Sun and most recently starred in Aaron Sorkin's Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Samuel L. Jackson was last seen on Broadway as Martin Luther King Jr. in 2011's The Mountaintop. Brooks was nominated for a Tony in 2016 for her work in The Color Purple.

Michael Potts, April Matthis, Trai Byers and Ray Fisher also appear in the play. Performances of The Piano Lesson begin Monday, September 19, at the Barrymore Theatre.