In a 2017 New York Times article about actors' first exposures to the plays of August Wilson, André Holland said that the first time he ever saw one of Wilson's plays was during high school, when when his mother took him to a production of "The Piano Lesson" at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. Reflecting on that experience, he said, "I didn't know people could do that onstage: talk the way people I knew talked, face the same issues that people in my community faced." In 2017 Holland went on to appear in one of Wilson's plays himself: the Broadway debut of "Jitney.".