For the incomparable Angela Bassett, it is a new day and a new dawn. She is finally getting her Oscar amid the 30th anniversary of the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Bassett was disappointed at the 95th annual Academy Awards when she didn’t go home with the best-supporting actress Oscar for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever this spring. But, the energy hits differently now that Queen Ramonda, who is crowned as the first actor to receive an Oscar nomination for a Marvel movie, can add the coveted honorary Academy Award to her shelf after her official induction in a fall ceremony.
The annual event, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will be held on Nov. 18 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, Variety reported. The 9-1-1 actress is among other recipients, including Mel Brooks and editor Carol Littleton, who will be celebrated for leading a lifetime of achievements.
In a statement, Academy President Janet Yang glorified Bassett’s decades-long career and her perseverance in delivering “transcendent performances that set new standards in acting,” per Vanity Fair.
Indeed, Bassett’s first Oscar comes not only after an abundant and successful career in Hollywood but after a powerful performance in the sequel to Black Panther. She is regarded as a brilliant actress deserving of an EGOT and a “real Oscar.”
Most recently, Bassett took home a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Entertainer of the Year, a 2023 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture, and a 2023 Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress — all for Wakanda Forever.
From 10-hour dance rehearsals and a fractured hand to a trip to the chiropractor and even mastering how the Queen of Rock & Roll breathed, Angela Bassett committed herself fully to playing Tina Turner. But her Oscar nomination in 1993 for that role did not stick.
And yet the marathon continues in this business. In 2021, the 64-year-old Bassett negotiated and secured a major pay increase per episode as an LAPD crime-fighting series regular on Fox’s flagship drama 9-1-1. Raking in $450,000 per episode, Deadline reported that Bassett was believed to be “among the top salaries on network television for any actor—male or female—and could be the highest ever for an actress of color on a broadcast drama series.”
Before the great Tina Turner passed away last month, Bassett was named one of the most influential people of 2023 for TIME
magazine’s annual “TIME100” list, and the star’s dedication was written by the one and only “Queen of Rock ‘N’ Roll,” Tina Turner. BE reported that Turner praised Bassett for her hard work in portraying her.“‘She’s perfect,’ I said, and I was right,” Turner added, per BE. “You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world.”
Twitter is torn with the Academy’s decision. One perspective argues that Bassett’s Oscar is long overdue and well-deserved, and others don’t buy into the honorary Oscars.