“17 hours a day”: Angela Bassett on the most challenging role of her career
Receiving an Academy Award nomination for a Marvel movie is such a rare distinction that only one person has ever managed to do it, but that’s Angela Bassett in a nutshell. Thanks to her effortless talent, the actor is capable of elevating any material regardless of genre
It didn’t take too long for Bassett to gain prominence on the big screen after starting out in a number of TV shows in the mid-1980s, not that anybody would ever describe her role as a stewardess in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Kindergarten Cop as a star-maker.
The part of Reva Devereaux in John Singleton’s ‘Best Picture’-nominated classic Boys n the Hood was a much better showcase for her talents, as was embodying civil rights activist in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. Neither of them were heralded as genuine breakthroughs, though, but that came soon enough.
The first major top-billed gig of Bassett’s career came when she played Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It. While the subject wasn’t entirely thrilled with the way she’d been portrayed as a victim, she was complimentary of a showstopping and emotionally complex central turn that deservedly landed its leading lady on the shortlist for ‘Best Actress’ at the Academy Awards.
What makes it all the more remarkable is that Bassett only auditioned two months before the start of production in December 1992, and she was only officially confirmed as Turner weeks before cameras started rolling. This forced her to go on a crash course to learn the cadence, mannerisms, and stage persona of the iconic songstress. On the plus side, she didn’t have to do her own singing, but it was an intense and very brief preparation period, regardless.
Unsurprisingly, then, Bassett called What’s Love Got to Do with It “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” with the arduous shooting schedule and her constant presence from the beginning to end of the 118-minute feature pushing the performer to her absolute limits.
“17 hours a day,” she said to Interview of the time she spent on set during the shoot. “You’re basically in every frame of the movie. Your emotions are called up all the time. I would have my little mini-breakdowns just before dance rehearsal. Then I’d think, ‘I don’t think I got this role because they want to see me fail miserably at it. I got it because they think I can do it. OK, I’m ready. What number’s up first?’ ‘Shake a Tail Feather’.”
When she was first offered the part, Bassett admitted that “I didn’t think I could do it,” which was shown to be inaccurate in quite some style. Many had her pegged as the favourite for the Oscar, too, but in the end, she lost out to Holly Hunter’s heart-wrenching performance in The Piano.
