Angela Bassett Did The Thing!
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The actress has earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“He understands just empirically everything that I go through,” she says. “He can really give me perspective, because it gets very heady and very busy, but he just keeps me very grounded about the important things, that life is good and we’re all just doing our best to support each other.”
Bassett says she thinks her friend and co-star Chadwick Boseman would be touched by all the positive attention the sequel to the 2018 hit is receiving.
“He would be amazingly supportive. It is his nature,” she says.
What is biggest lesson this year’s Oscar nomination has taught her? “Never give up and run after your passion,” says Bassett, 64, who earned her first Oscar nomination for playing Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It. “Maybe one day, something as wonderful as this occurs.”
Ahead of Hollywood’s biggest night, eight Oscar nominees who delivered unforgettable performances this year brought the glamour and excitement to PEOPLE’s annual Oscar portfolio
Best Supporting Actress nominee Angela Bassett said her nomination for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever reminded her to “never give up and run after your passion. Maybe one day, something as wonderful as this occurs.”
The actress earned her first Oscar nomination in 1995 for playing Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It. With the ocean behind her and the sun shining brightly, Bassett posed for the portfolio at El Encanto, a Belmond Hotel, Santa Barbara on Feb. 9. She said to play matriarch Queen Ramonda she drew from her own experience as a mother: “You’re always thinking of them – wanting the best for your kids.”
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Angela Bassett has earned her second Oscar nomination, this one for her role as Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Moments after the credits started rolling at the premiere of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Angela Bassett’s son, Slater, leaned over and whispered in his mom’s ear: “Oscar.” Months later, Bassett laughs at the memory because her immediate response, at least in her head, was “Aaaaaw, you’re my son. You’re supposed to say nice things to your mom. But thank you, darling!”
Ever since the January announcement that Bassett had earned an Oscar nomination for reprising the role of Queen Ramonda and, in the process, becoming the first actor to win academy recognition for a Marvel movie, Slater has reminded her more than once about that evening.
“At the time, the Oscars were the furthest thing in my mind,” Bassett tells me. It’s a Saturday, and we’re seated in a booth in a noisy breakfast spot not far from her La Cañada Flintridge home, a cozy spot where Bassett stands out because she’s wearing a stylish pantsuit and has ordered only tea, forsaking the bulging breakfast plates that the wait staff carries by our booth. Also: She’s Angela Bassett! No matter the setting, her magnificence doesn’t exactly blend into the background.
We’ve been talking about transitions, thinking about Slater and his twin sister, Bronwyn, high school juniors about to make their first trip back east to check out colleges. “Thank you, Lord, for one more year,” Bassett, 64, says of their looming departure from home. “As they say, it does go by quickly. I was telling that to someone the other day that we always say that, maybe thinking time will slow time down. But it doesn’t slow down, does it?”
Not long ago, a friend asked Bassett if she was ready for an empty nest. Ready? She was practically incredulous. She has been preparing for her children leaving from the moment they were born, she says, realizing it was inevitable. That hasn’t stopped her from scrolling through pictures and videos on her phone lately, watching her babies dancing and singing, the years passing, cartwheels turning into car wheels, as the song goes, and here she is today, readying them for visits to Yale and Harvard.
“The other day I asked my daughter, just fishing, saying, ‘Oh, if you go to Yale, I’m going to get an apartment just down the street from you,’” Bassett says. “And she’s like, ‘That’d be great, Mom!’” Bassett shakes her head, laughing. “Just fishing, you know. Like, ‘I’m going to miss you! So I’m going to go back to college too.’”
But, talk about time passing: To Bassett, it doesn’t feel like it was all that long ago that she moved to Los Angeles, five years after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, ending up crashing at a friend’s Hollywood apartment just behind Sunset Bronson Studios. She’d walk down Sunset Boulevard to the gym, getting strange looks from motorists. “Like, ‘What’s wrong with her? Is she crazy? What’s she up to?’ All because I was walking,” Bassett says. “I’d just come from New York and didn’t have a car. In New York, you walk. If you do that here, you feel weird because there’s no one else on the sidewalk.”
Her mother and aunt wanted Bassett to go into nursing or teaching. “You want to be a princess?” Bassett bursts out laughing at the memory of how they felt about her career choice. “To them, understandably, it was a pipe dream.”
Bassett brings up the 1992 sci-fi comedy “Critters 4,” which I’d never have pegged as a career milestone. For her though, as a young working actor, it was a role in a horror franchise in which her character survived to the closing credits. “You mean, I don’t die?” Bassett recalls thinking, laughing. “That was a transition.”
One year later, Bassett earned an Oscar nomination for playing Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” showcasing the full range of her talent and ability to shift between vulnerability and strength as well as dance in 5-inch heels while singing “Proud Mary.” During the shoot, there was chatter in the trades that the movie was in trouble and that Bassett had been miscast. Bassett heard it and asked to watch the dailies. She looked at two scenes — the “Proud Mary” performance and a small moment that had Turner finding peace through a Buddhist chant.
“I bought what I did,” Bassett says. “After that, I didn’t need to see anything else. I knew I was on the right track. I’ve always believed it’s better to be underestimated and then deliver.”
Bassett extends that philosophy to any and all expectations for industry approval. That first Oscar nomination came 29 years ago. And despite all the strong praise for her commanding turn in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” as a queen working through grief while standing strong for her people, Bassett never assumed she’d ever be back at the ceremony as a nominee.
“I’m not 30, you know,” Bassett says. “You’re looking for those great roles and for women of a certain age, it takes more effort and concentration, more creativity for the people who want to work with you. It takes some belief that it is possible. I didn’t quite believe it. But I’ll tell you who did — Courtney.”
That’s Courtney B. Vance, Bassett’s husband of 25 years and the fellow actor who kept telling her that one day a role would come along to take his wife back to the Oscars. Bassett could never bring herself to verbalize that dream. “But I would not speak against what Courtney hoped for me,” she says, smiling. “I wouldn’t speak for it! I couldn’t chime in! I didn’t have it in me to chime in. It’s been 30 years! I’m thinking, ‘I’m 60-whatever. Stop wishing. Stop hoping. Stop dreaming. You’re just my husband. I know you love me. Husbands have to say that.’”
Vance, reached by phone, says: “I kept reminding her: ‘You just have to keep going. The world will come around to you. You haven’t changed a bit. You’re the same hard-working actress and queen that we all know.’”
Bassett probably would have slept through the Oscar nominations announcement had her publicist not called her the day before with a reminder. She set the alarm for 5:25 a.m., but she woke up a couple of hours earlier, stressed and nervous. She lay in bed tossing and turning, finally giving up to get out of bed and check the clock. It was 5:25. She nudged Vance, asking if he wanted to watch. Bassett tells me more than once that she likes to downplay things, but she figured this could be a twice-in-a-lifetime moment and she wanted to share the memory with her husband. Maybe they could look back on it someday and say, “Remember when …”
Now if she could just figure out how to turn on the damn television …
“Smart TVs have made us dumb,” she says with a laugh. “I had one remote in each hand, trying to figure it out.”
Supporting actress was the first category announced. And as nominees are revealed alphabetically, Angela Bassett was the first name called. “I was filming it,” Bassett says. “I let out a little bit of a whoop.” She watched the rest of the announcement, answered a couple of texts and then went back to bed. She had a long day of filming ahead for her hit TV series “9-1-1” and had to be at 20th Century Fox by 8. Sleep came easy. The anxiety had evaporated.
Asked what it means to her to be nominated again, nearly three decades later, Bassett takes a moment.
“It means I did what I came to do,” she says, speaking slowly, her gaze holding mine. “I did what I came to do. And I did it well.”
Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) joins Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Emma Corrin (“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” & “My Policeman”), Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”), Laura Dern (“The Son”) & Janelle Monáe (“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”) on the Los Angeles Times Envelope Actresses Roundtable.
The Critics Choice Association’s fifth annual Celebration of Black Cinema and Television culminated in the evening’s most anticipated honor — the presentation of the Career Achievement Award to Oscar-nominated actor Angela Bassett, who recently starred in Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
“My representation of you on screen put me on a path as a little Black girl — a high school student that lived in the Jordan Park housing project in St. Petersburg, Fla. — that I only dreamed of because of you,” Bassett said in her acceptance speech, addressing a packed room of star-studded talent and cinema enthusiasts. “My dreams were not only fulfilled, but your stories have been immortalized — some of them for future generations to discover and enjoy.”
This year’s ceremony took place Dec. 5 at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel and was hosted by actor-comedian Bill Bellamy. The event serves to recognize Black performers and filmmakers who are making stellar contributions to the film and television industry.
“I literally was shooting last year at this time and seeing pictures of this event and thinking, ‘Oh how beautiful it would be to be able to get the chance to be here, to be honored, to have some of my cast here,’” Gina Prince-Bythewood, whose work on “The Woman King” earned her the Director Award for Film, told Variety on the red carpet.
“‘The Woman King’ was an experience of the best in show — we worked with the best director, the best writer and the most incredible ensemble of actors, and they all worked so hard to deliver a pitch-perfect project,” TriStar Pictures President Nicole Brown said on the carpet. “We were all craving to see women be strong and empowered, and this story has a timelessness but also a sense of urgency, and I think audiences have shown us how much they wanted to see it.”
“The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri also was given the special distinction of the Rising Star Award, presented by IMDbPro for her work on the FX series. Shortly after the series’ premiere earlier this year’ June premiere, Edebiri jumped into her next project: “Theater Camp,” a musical comedy co-starring Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin, Amy Sedaris and more, which she delved into on the carpet.
“‘Theater Camp’ was really fun to film; I mean, it really felt like we were there,” Edebiri told Variety. “I didn’t have parents that would send me to a sleepaway camp or anything, so it was really fun getting to be there upstate, at a camp, hanging out with each other — it really did invoke that experience.”
In addition to the Black creatives honored in 15 categories, Michael B. Jordan received the Melvin Van Peebles Trailblazer Award in recognition of his seasoned career and upcoming directorial debut, “Creed III.” Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi also was presented with the Groundbreaker Award for wielding dual actor and creator credits on his Netflix special “Entergalactic.”
Berry Gordy, the 93-year-old founder of the Motown record label, received the Icon Award for his influence on the music of film and television over the decades. The famed record producer has helped launch international hits like the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and the Temptations’ “(You’re My) Dream Come True.” Billy Dee Williams, the actor who played Lando Calrissian in the original Star Wars trilogy, surprised Gordy onstage to present him with the honor.
Other talent in attendance included “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson; Quincy Isaiah, who plays Magic Johnson in HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”; “Devotion” lead Jonathan Majors; “Nanny” writer-director Nikyatu Jusu; and the ensemble cast of ABC’s “The Wonder Years” revival.
One star unable to make it to the ceremony was actor Danielle Deadwyler, who was set to receive the Actress Award for Film for her performance as Mamie Till-Mobley in Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till.” Deadwyler is currently in New Orleans filming the upcoming feature “Carry On,” from director Jaume Collet-Serra.
Variety-When the 36-year-old filmmaker first joins Variety to talk about his latest movie, Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — the $250 million sequel to “Black Panther” — it’s at the end of an exhausting day of press interviews in late October. He ambles into a hotel suite that’s been mostly emptied out for this conversation, and as he sinks into a couch that’s much lower than any of the other chairs in the room, his puzzled expression makes clear that he’s not happy with the ad hoc surroundings.
“It’s a little weird,” he says. “Is there another place we could do this? Could we sit at a table or something?”
When Angela Bassett was cast as the monarch in the world of Wakanda, it wasn’t a stretch. Our lifetime achievement honoree has always ruled the stage and screen with regal grace. Here she opens up about what the future holds.
“She was that mother who may have been sleeping after work every day, but if that teacher called and said, ‘Angela can do better,’ she was up there in front of their faces with her stenographer’s pad taking notes,” she says.
Bassett recalls protesting to her mother in one such instance, “Mother, a C is average, a B is above average, and an A is above. I’m average, Ma!”
“But I don’t have average children,” her mother replied.
It was a sort of lightning strike, and Bassett has bottled and transformed it, applying its lesson throughout her career and in relationships: “Consider more of yourself, hold yourself to a higher standard, and you’ll reach it.”
It was on a school field trip that Bassett found her purpose—that thing at which she was decidedly not average. With attendants collecting discarded playbills around her, a 15-year-old Angela was still in her seat at the Kennedy Center, sobbing after a performance of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in which the screen and stage titan James Earl Jones had starred as Lennie. “I could get tears right now! ‘Oh, I feel so bad and so good,’” she recalls. “Like life,” she adds with a softness that contains the bitter and the sweet of things.
Read more at Glamour.com
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