Angela Bassett was ‘disappointed’ when she lost the Oscar, ‘I was deserving’

Angela Bassett covers the latest issue of Town & Country, mostly to promote her new Netflix limited series Zero Day. She reunites with Robert DeNiro (they worked together in The Score) and she plays POTUS. Angela also talks about her “day job” on episodic network television, her work on 9-1-1, and her thoughts about losing the Best Supporting Actress Oscar two years ago. That’s the part that’s getting the most attention, and let me say right upfront that Angela Bassett can be as mad and as petty as she wants – she was absolutely robbed that year. She’s not even petty about it though, she just expresses her disappointment. Some highlights from T&C:

On her early days: “You’re just trying to find little pieces where you are, little moments of daylight to be able to do this. So no matter how small it was, it was just a joy and a blessing. I wonder if that’s why, when I get the opportunity, whatever opportunity it is, to perform or to be in front of an audience, to me it’s daylight. It’s really… You don’t take it for granted.” She repeats it, this time in a whisper. “Don’t take it for granted.”

She never wanted to play weak women: “All of that, I think, was thrown into the pot that is my life, the gumbo that is my life, and seasoned it, so that my choices were a strong woman who was in control of herself and her situation. So that appealed to me. Gentle is something different. But weak? She never takes command of her situations? That didn’t appeal to me.”





Imposter syndrome at Yale: At Yale she suffered from impostor syndrome, unsure she could compete with the privileged kids surrounding her. “They didn’t have that term for it then. But I felt a little of that. I still do feel that. But you put on a face, and you go, and you do it anyway. Courage is doing it even when you’re scared to do it, right?”

Losing the Oscar to Jamie Lee Curtis & the conversation about her visible sadness: She later told Oprah Winfrey that she was “gobsmacked,” both by the loss and the chatter that ensued. “I found it interesting. Interesting that I wouldn’t be allowed to be disappointed at an outcome where I thought I was deserving.” While she may have moved past the episode, she hasn’t forgotten it. “I love applauding people. But in that moment…” She trails off, talks about how she had thought she had put in the work to be recognized, then corrects herself. “No, I have put in: put in the time, put in good work over time. I didn’t think that was a gift. I thought it was a given.” The following year the academy bestowed on her an honorary Oscar.

Her work on 9-1-1: “I never thought about doing a procedural. I never thought about doing a series, really,” Bassett says. But her experience on American Horror Story—the bold storytelling, the quality writing—convinced her that with Murphy at the helm, they could breathe new life into an old format. It didn’t hurt that, at a reported $450,000 per episode, she has also become one of the highest-paid actresses of color in the history of television. And with contemporary TV’s shorter seasons, she still has room for the occasional big screen turn; she’s reprising her role as CIA director Erika Sloane opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, due out in May.

[From Town & Country]

I didn’t realize that 9-1-1 made Angela the highest-paid woman of color in TV history. That’s amazing, and it’s amazing for a network procedural. Let me look something up… Mariska Hargitay gets $500K per episode of Law & Order: SVU, and Mariska has been on that show for 20-plus years. So… yeah, Angela is in some rarefied air for television. As for what she says about losing the Oscar… she can feel anyway she wants, as I said. It was awful and it’s horrible to expect Angela to put on a happy face after losing to THAT performance. Anyway, I’m glad that Angela stays booked and busy. She and her husband Courtney B. Vance deserve the world.

Cover courtesy of T&C, additional photos courtesy of Avalon Red.