The Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored Oscar nominee Angela Bassett last night with the Montecito Award, to the cheering delight of the nearly sold-out historic Arlington Theater in downtown Santa Barbara. Festival executive director Roger Durling sat down with Bassett to discuss her forty-plus year career in an hour-long conversation that traced Bassett’s journey from growing up in St. Petersburg, Florida to Broadway to her two touted Oscar nominations. While her current Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which comes twenty-nine years after her first for her breakout role as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It (1993), might feel like a culmination of a long and varied career, it was clear that Bassett is nowhere near finished.
Here are some highlights of the conversation:
Education was important to her mother, so Bassett knew from a young age that she would be going to college. Even though she had fallen in love with acting at fifteen after seeing James Earl Jones on stage, she believed a career in acting was impractical, so she went to Yale University initially to pursue a business degree. But during her junior year, she realized that it would be just as difficult to pursue and be successful at something she didn’t love and have a passion for as it would to pursue something that she did, so she decided then and there to fully commit to being an actor. She would later enroll at the prestigious Yale Drama School.
Bassett created the role of Ma Rainey in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and her admiration and respect for Wilson runs deep. “He was our Shakespeare, living, walking among us and he looked like me.”
After years of continually being frustrated by not landing roles in television and film that she would audition for from New York, she decided to move to Los Angeles, and she says she remembers the date exactly: October 11, 1988. She felt she needed to “be there to actually knock on the door.”
When Durling noted that Bassett’s portrayal of Betty Shabazz in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) was her first based-on-a-real-person role on film, she was shocked. “Was that really the first?”
Speaking of working with Denzel Washington, who played Malcolm X, Bassett notes, “It could be terribly intimidating. He would consume you with his fire.”
Her agents tried to talk her out of playing Katherine Jackson in the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992), but, having grown up with posters of the Jackson 5 on her wall, she truly wanted to do it. The scandal about Michael Jackson had just surfaced, but Bassett reminded her agents that she wouldn’t be playing Michael. “The one thing that is true about the Jacksons is they all adore and revere their mother, and reverence for mothers is what I want to put out into the world.”
Watching the kids who portrayed the Jacksons in the miniseries inspired her in her performance as Tina Turner, as she was truly floored by their work ethic, skills and passion.
As for the role of Tina Turner, which turned out to be Bassett’s breakout role, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1994, it was a very stressful and difficult shoot, as they had to rush the film to get it out in time to coincide with Tina Turner’s world tour. She told stories of how they were rushing so much she sometimes would run to the set with only half her makeup on and her wig falling off.
The final scene of the film, which takes place in a limo, took twenty-five hours to shoot, and she gave it everything she had, and she was completely exhausted, emotionally and physically, afterwards.
Turner herself visiting the set, and meeting her and seeing the icon in person did so much for Bassett’s latching onto the character’s core. Bassett says Turner’s matter-of-factness and unbroken spirit made the biggest impression.
When Turner visited the set on a day that Bassett was learning the choreography for the concert scenes, she convinced director Brian Gibson to let Bassett learn it before she had to put the heels on—a suggestion Bassett was eternally grateful for. “My angel!”
Bassett acknowledges it took quite a while for her to let go of playing Tina.
Even though Bassett scored an Oscar nomination and worldwide acclaim for What’s Love Got To Do With It, she said her phone didn’t ring for 18 months.
Bassett noted that her films Strange Days (1995) and Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) were shot back-to-back, and were both 100% night shoots, so she spent eight months living like a vampire. “I had aluminum foil on my windows to keep the sun out.”
She only just found out this year that her line reading of “Right here, right now” from Strange Days is sampled in the hit FatBoy Slim song from 1998, which made the crowd gasp.
Working on Waiting to Exhale (1995) was easy, as she noted, “I know Bernadine. I know this sisterhood.” She also knew it would be big, as she said, “I saw everyone on the A train reading the book, so I knew it would do well.”
By the time she got to How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), she got to have a say in picking her leading man, which was a big deal for her, and she knew her career had gotten somewhere.
Bassett got married during the shoot of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and she had to beg for two days off to do it. “I had a one-day honeymoon!”
Her mother’s early emphasis on education came up again while discussing her roles in Music of the Heart (1999) and Akeelah and the Bee (2006), two roles that are close to her heart.
As for her role as Ramonda in the Black Panther franchise, Bassett says she is not too far from her, because of her emphasis on community and family, two things very important to Bassett.
When asked if she listened to the critics about Black Panther, she said she didn’t, but she did confess that she “went down a rabbit hole on YouTube” watching people’s reactions to the trailer before the film was released. She was blown away by how much people loved it. She says she ignores critics, but gives love to those who give her love.
As for her Black Panther director, Ryan Coogler, Bassett says, “I have complete faith and trust in him.”
While not a career culmination by any means, Bassett does acknowledge what Black Panther means to the world and to her career: “To be able to offer that representation is a dream come true. It’s a full-circle moment.”
Coogler was on hand to present Bassett the SBIFF Montecito Award, and gave a heartfelt and moving tribute to Bassett, often taking extra moments to let the significance sink in. He noted that his father took him to see Boyz in the Hood (1991) when he was 5, even though he had no idea what he was watching, because it was a film every black father needed to show to their black sons.
Coogler says that he has often watched Bassett’s films with the women in his life.
About Bassett, Coogler notes, “Angela represents something. Truth. Truth breaking through the lies.” Working with Bassett on Black Panther was “a revelation.” He added, with respect and admiration, “She was a coach on the field. It’s all there. As a director, I just get out of her way.”
Watch the complete event below.
Photos courtesy of Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for SBIFF
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