Danielle Deadwyler on playing Berniece in The Piano Lesson

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Danielle Deadwyler on playing Berniece in The Piano Lesson Report by Mccallumj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00Hello again! Nice to see you!

00:03Buenos dias! How are you?

00:06Listen, look at this choker!

00:08Yeah!

00:09You're a lady in white. You look a vision.

00:12It was so nice to meet you both yesterday. I had such a laugh.

00:14I was like smiling after the show.

00:16I was cutting up a little bit.

00:17You were so funny.

00:18Just a hint.

00:19And do you know what? I love that because every time I watch you, I'm bawling my eyes out.

00:22I'm in awe. You're always playing characters that are going through it.

00:26When's the comedy? When are you giving some light?

00:28All of that is in there. More of that will come.

00:30But I think that this enabled me to play someone super complex and someone tender and soft

00:37and longing not just in a grief-stricken or loss-stricken manner.

00:43She's longing for love and eroticism and a different kind of life force.

00:50And that's something that's being sought.

00:54A tension in reaching that is through the piano and through the spectres and the hates that are in the film.

01:01But she wants everything and everything is being moved through.

01:05Sometimes we might get stuck on the grief, but you've got to move through those tensions

01:10in order to come to a powerful climax of self.

01:15I wouldn't mess with Bernice.

01:17Listen, what was it like playing a woman who was actually empowered in that time as well?

01:21Yeah, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing.

01:23Because we have a presumption in history that things are a certain kind of way

01:28and that's not necessarily true.

01:30Malcolm and I talked a lot about Zora Neale Hurston as a woman of that era

01:34who was pushing against the stereotypes and the boundaries of what it meant to be a woman.

01:38So I applied some of that to the speculative imagining of who Bernice was.

01:44And just finally then, what was it like getting to work with everybody?

01:47Because I love you all.

01:48The bomb!

01:50That's all you get.

01:51I love it. Listen, you look amazing.

01:53You deserve all the awards for this. You're incredible.

01:55There's award enough. Thank you so much.

01:57Thank you so much. Thank you.

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