Angela Bassett Reveals She Was ‘Gobsmacked’ to Lose Oscar for ‘Black Panther 2’

As part of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s OWN Spotlight series, Angela Bassett recently admitted that she was shocked when she came up short of the Oscar for supporting actress last year. 

Bassett’s performance in Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had earned her an Academy Award nomination. While she had won the Globe Globe Award and Critics Choice Award for supporting actress, Jamie Lee Curtis ultimately won the Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

“I just knew your name was going to be called,” Winfrey told Bassett. “I was beside myself [when it wasn’t]! We were beside ourselves.”

“I was gobsmacked! I was,” Bassett replied. “I thought I handled it very well. That was my intention, to handle it very well. It was, of course, a supreme disappointment, and disappointment is human. So I thought, yes, I was disappointed and I handled it like a human being.”

According to the 9-1-1 actor, gracefully handling the Oscar loss was imperative “for myself and my children who were there with me.” “There are going to be these moments of disappointment that you’ll experience, but how do you handle yourself in the midst of them?” she added. “We’re going to smile, we’re going to be gracious, we’re going to be kind, we’re going to party anyway.”

Bassett had only been nominated for an Oscar once before when she portrayed Tina Turner in 1994’s What’s Love Got to Do with It, which won her a Golden Globe as well. After her 2023 loss, Bassett received an Honorary Award as part of this year’s Oscar season.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever marked Bassett’s second appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Queen Ramonda. As the first person to be nominated for an Academy Award for a Marvel movie, Bassett told Winfrey she signed on to play the character before even reading the script in the original Black Panther film.

“Some of these places are secretive with the scripts, but [director Ryan Coogler] said, ‘Queen.’ For years I had been saying … when they ask what else you want to play, I’d say, ‘I want to play a queen.’ I manifested it, evidently,” Bassett said. “Because I hadn’t seen it. It’s not queen for me, it’s queen for us. We are queens. My mother, my auntie, you. We all are. So often Black women are considered at the low end of the totem. No!”

During a Santa Barbara Film Festival career retrospective interview last year, Bassett paid tribute to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In her remarks, she expressed gratitude for the opportunity to appear in a film that mainly features Black women and its influence. “That representation that I longed for when I was a young actor coming up? To be able to offer that, to be given the opportunity to offer that, is a dream come true,” Bassett said.