John David Washington - 50:57 (40.08%)
Danielle Deadwyler - 46:44 (36.76%)
Ray Fisher - 35:27 (27.89%)
Samuel L. Jackson - 33:25 (26.29%)
Michael Potts - 20:50 (16.39%)
Corey Hawkins - 18:34 (14.61%)
Skylar Aleece Smith - 13:54 (10.93%)
Stephan James - 3:43 (2.92%)
August Wilson had a knack for creating female characters of disputable narrative importance. Recent film portrayals of Rose Maxson, Ma Rainey, and Berniece Charles have all sparked intense awards category placement debates, but I personally only take issue with the latest of those three campaigns.
Danielle Deadwyler follows 1995 lead Emmy nominee Alfre Woodard as the second actress to play Berniece in a screen adaptation of The Piano Lesson. At the 1990 Tonys, S. Epatha Merkerson was recognized as a featured actress in the same role while Charles S. Dutton was nominated as the play’s sole lead.
Having compiled screen time data for the 1995 and 2024 film versions of The Piano Lesson, I am of the belief that Berniece is a lead character in both. Moreover, if Woodard belonged in lead back then, there’s no denying that Deadwyler does now.
I understand why some view Berniece as supporting. Since Boy Willie (Dutton in 1995 and John David Washington in 2024) takes up the largest amount of narrative space while moving through his powerful arc, some may casually perceive that the story revolves around him. However, I view the siblings as dual protagonists in a story greater than either of them, and analyzing both films’ screen time data proves that Berniece (especially Deadwyler’s Berniece) is a truly dynamic character – not merely a static one in what some seem to think is “The Boy Willie Story.”
Obviously, screen time does not and should not determine category placement. Case in point: Deadwyler has a bit less screen time than Viola Davis has in 2016’s Fences, but Davis’s supporting campaign was completely justified. Fences clearly revolves around a single lead character whose wife and younger son coexist on a tier beneath him (even those last 18 minutes are about him), but The Piano Lesson is quite different. Boy Willie has never been as narratively dominant as Troy Maxson, and choices were made in the 2024 adaptation to make that even more true.
The following breakdown of how each character’s screen time changed from 1995 to 2024 illustrates Virgil Williams and Malcolm Washington’s intention to drastically narrow the gap between Boy Willie and Berniece:
Factoring in Isaiah Gunn and Kylee Allen’s performances in the new film, Boy Willie’s screen time advantage over Berniece shrank from 18.44% in 1995 to just 4.67% in 2024. Clear measures were taken to boost Berniece above Doaker and Lymon (who outpaced her by five and seven minutes in 1995) to the point where she firmly holds space on the same tier as her brother. Woodard didn’t run supporting when she had more cause to, so it makes no sense for someone playing a much more prominent version of Berniece to campaign there.
Here are some charts showing (i) each character’s screen time percentage in each quarter of the 2024 film, (ii) how each character’s time is split between the 2024 film’s two acts, and (iii) quarter and act breakdowns pertaining to Boy Willie and Berniece in both 1995 and 2024:
Again, screen time doesn’t decide anything – I just often find it enlightening, and very much so in this case. I think it should be clear to anyone who’s seen both versions of The Piano Lesson that the 2024 filmmakers purposely took a lead character and made her even more of one. There certainly have been more egregiously miscategorized supporting Oscar nominees, but Deadwyler is nonetheless out of place right now.