KINDRED SPIRITS

Decades after Samuel L. Jackson originated a role in August Wilson's turbulent family drama The Piano Lesson, he's headed to Broadway with John David Washington to bring a ghost story back to life By TONY NORMAN

- TONY NORMAN

"I WAS AROUND when August would come and lay out eight pages of a new speech that we had to put in that night because we were doing previews and you run and you do it," says Samuel L. Jackson. He's thinking back to 1987, when he originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He regards the late playwright as "the Black Shakespeare" but says, "Man, it was a lot of words. It was grueling."

This fall, John David Washington plays Boy Willie in a Broadway revival directed by Jackson's wife of 42 years, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and-because Jackson himself will appear as Boy Willie's uncle, Doaker Charles-he'll do it while standing onstage with the man who first gave the character flesh and blood. "I'm coming in as a student," Washington says in a dual interview with his costar. "I'm coming in to learn as much as I can from our director, LaTanya, and this man here." Washington has known Jackson since the former was a toddler, thanks to Jackson's friendship with his father, Denzel. Still, it sounds like it'd be intimidating to re-create the role right in front of him. Jackson waves the idea away. "He didn't see me do it," he says, then adds playfully, "but I killed that shit." Washington laughs: "And the ghosts, like in the theme of the play, will forever haunt us."