Angela Bassett – Queen of the Universe

When Angela Bassett was cast as the monarch in the world of Wakanda, it wasn't a stretch. The Oscar-nominated actress has always ruled the stage and screen with regal grace. Here she opens up about what the future holds.

- By Zandria Robinson

This summer, in some mean August heat, Angela Bassett - stunning in a white, form fitting gown, a soft-wave bob dancing with the angles of her face - emerges from her curtained-off dressing area and takes her place on a stool before a camera. The crew is finishing setup, and Bassett prepares herself. As the teleprompter rolls, she mouths the words, so fervently that the tech staff tiptoe and all the air in the room seems to hush.

During this five-minute meditation, Bassett's face telegraphs a range of affective states, queueing them, bringing them forward, then allowing them to fade. Chest raised, she is the wise woman, undaunted. She summons the pensiveness and furrowed brow of a woman who remembers how things used to be, what we now prefer to forget. At one point she stops and looks around, asking the crew whether she's distracting them. She is reassured that she is not, and she continues. She raises her hands just in front of her, cupping and rowing them, as if she is folding the ocean. We are watching Bassett conjure something - the power that has propelled her through a singular career on the stage and screen.

"There's a saying I heard years ago, and it's 'Don't mistake your presence for the event," Bassett says, recalling the words of the late theatre great Roscoe Lee Brown. It certainly feels like her effervescent presence in and of itself is the event. But she offers so much in every gesture and word that every tiny moment is made into something spectacular.

Across a photo shoot day with multiple hair, makeup, and wardrobe changes, Bassett, 64, gives and just keeps on giving - face, angles, shapes, body, wit. She does so with humility, pretending to find the light when it's obvious that the light is duty bound to seek her.