It’s the Oscars That Need to Change, Not Angela Bassett
Angela Bassett’s been spurned by the Oscars once again. Instead of addressing why this talented Black female actor doesn’t have a little golden statue on her mantel, internet pundits—professional and amateur—are focusing on her reaction to the snub.
Unacknowledged queen
Writing for The Grio after the March 12th Oscar ceremony, Monique Judge said that after Bassett didn’t get the prize for the second time in three decades, the star didn’t “have to be gracious.”
After close to 40 years in show business, with the hard work she’s put in to get where she is in a white-dominated industry, not to mention the pivotal roles she’s played, Bassett wouldn’t be blamed if she didn’t have some feelings about the whole thing.
We saw the controlled but palpable disappointment on Bassett’s face when Jamie Lee Curtis was announced as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. For months Bassett had been touted as the front-runner for the prize for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
“Black people on TV! Black people on TV!”
Talking with the hosts of The View in late 2022 about her role in the Black Panther franchise, the now 64-year-old Bassett remembered her childhood in St. Petersburg, Florida, when the sight of performers of color was so rare as to cause a sensation in her family. Diana Ross would appear on The Ed Sullivan Show and her excited cry would be, “‘Black people on TV! Black people on TV!’”
Her Golden Globe-winning performance as Queen Ramonda gave her the chance to shine not only through her craft but as an icon and role model for a whole new generation of young Black women.
Representing with purpose and pride
During her long and successful career, Bassett has received numerous other honors, including a 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards.
In her speech accepting the award, Bassett thanked the many powerful Black women who impacted her life, many of whom she has portrayed onscreen.
Rosa Parks, played by Bassett in the 2002 TV movie The Rosa Parks Story, was “underestimated,” Bassett said. “Presumed to be meek and mild.” Then she described Parks’ reaction to the white bus driver in 1955 who told her to move to the back of the bus to let a white passenger have her seat. Quoting Parks, Bassett said the Civil Rights hero could feel the determination cloaking her, “‘like a quilt on a winter night.’”
Speaking of Tina Turner, whom she portrayed in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It? Bassett saluted the legendary singer’s resilience. Turner reinvented herself as a successful solo artist in the rock genre, a feat no Black woman had done before her. Bassett cited her own mother as another example of resilience, a woman who raised her daughters to be independent “women of purpose and pride.”
Bassett won a Golden Globe and received her first Oscar nomination for playing Turner. However, she lost to Holly Hunter for her role in The Piano.
Bassett debuted on Broadway in the mid-1980s, performing in August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Another early role was in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, also by Wilson, at the Yale Repertory Theater. Television and movie roles followed, including Kindergarten Cop (1990), Waiting to Exhale (1995), and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998).
She had a small but deeply affecting role as single mother Reva Styles, who was desperately trying to prevent her son from joining a gang, in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood. The following year, she starred in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X as Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz.
Since then, Bassett has starred in a diverse slate of films, including Akela and the Bee (2006), a warm family drama where she played the mother of an aspiring spelling bee champion. That same year, she returned to the stage to work in a production of August Wilson’s Fences. In the 2009 movie Notorious, she played the mother of the Notorious B.I.G.
It’s a body of work that would make any actor proud and aware of her worth. And in Bassett’s case, her portrayals of so many icons of Black history and culture have only added to her gravitas.
The hurt in our hearts
So to get back to our original observation: It’s not her attitude, it’s the attitude of the Oscar crowd.
In an episode of her popular celebrity and pop culture talk show, Sherri Shepherd observed that Oscar predictions heavily favored Bassett going into the evening. And, as gracious as Jamie Lee Curtis was upon her win, for many it was a huge disappointment that Basset once again failed to get the recognition she deserves.
Talking about Bassett’s loss and the subsequent fuss over her expression at the moment, Shepherd said, “This one hurt my heart.”
“Everybody sets you up,” said Shepherd of odds-on favorite Bassett. Everyone seemed to be telling her, “‘You are going to win.’”
Shepherd herself was sure Bassett would win. “I lit candles,” she told her talk show audience. Then, evoking empathetic laughter: “I saged.” She wanted Bassett to win so much, she did everything she could in terms of setting the actor up for good luck.
Shepherd then got serious, saying what will be on many minds for a long time: Bassett just needs one more great role to clinch the Oscar next time. The problem is, Shepherd continued, that Black and brown women so seldom get the chance to have even “that one role.”
Shepherd’s right—and that’s the problem. White female actors have plenty of star-making roles thrown their way. But Black women? Even at Bassett’s level, they still have to fight, work, and advocate for themselves continuously every step of the way. It’s exhausting.
So instead of asking why Angela Bassett didn’t put a fake, frozen smile on her face at the moment the Oscar audience expected her to—why she sat there stone-faced in all her regal Wakanda-ness—the real question involves the structural inequalities in the entertainment industry that are only now beginning to be addressed.
As Grio writer Judge put it, Hollywood did what it regularly does: “uphold whiteness.”