Two-time Oscar nominee Angela Bassett was surprised with a blast from her movie past when she was presented with her iconic costume from the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”
Yes, “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King did.
Bassett’s role as legendary singer Tina Turner earned the ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ star her first Academy Award nomination, and King had a special surprise in store for the actor on Friday’s show.
Bassett, 64, who is nominated as a supporting actress at this year’s Oscars, gleefully did her Turner dance with the fringed gold dress she wore in the musical film, saying she hadn’t seen it in 30 years.
Angela Bassett stars as Tina Turner in the 1993 movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It”.
(D.Stevens / Vos)
“Oh look,” Bassett exclaimed when she saw the costume, which was accompanied by the matching pumps she wore in the movie.
“Angela, this is the real dress,” King told her, with both women noting that it was the costume Bassett wore during the scene depicting Ike and Tina Turner’s performance. bold version from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”
King said the beaded dress and matching embellished shoes were among the few items from the film to be kept in the archives. They were stored in an air-conditioned warehouse on the Walt Disney property, according to the cover.
The “Waiting to Exhale” and “American Horror Story” star seemed disbelieving that the shoes she danced on during “What’s Love Got to Do With It” were in front of her and said she hadn’t seen the costumes since. final day of shooting for the Brian Gibson-directed film, which chronicled the tumultuous love affair between Ike and Tina Turner.
“I love it. I love it!” exclaimed the star. “Can I take it home? I will keep it safe.”
“We would take, take and take. We sang that song all day,” Bassett told King. “We would do it from the beginning of the song to the end of the song, all the way through, not like bits and pieces. The whole thing, me and the girls, the Ikettes, and then (it felt) like you swallowed a wool sweater. And he’d say, ‘Go again,’ and you were like, ‘Can an actor have a moment, a minute?’”
Unfortunately, Bassett didn’t win the Academy Award at that ceremony in 1994. The lead actress Oscar went to Holly Hunter for her role in Jane Campion’s historical romance “The Piano.” Many, including King, said Bassett was “robbed” of the award that night and the CBS host asked her how she felt about it all these years later.
“Sure, the moment you hope and pray and wish, but I never walk, I don’t walk away thinking ‘I’ve been robbed.’ That’s too negative an emotion to carry with me for the rest of my life,” Bassett said. “I choose to believe there’s a reason why it didn’t happen.”
Bassett next starred in Kathryn Bigelow’s cop drama “Strange Days” with Ralph Fiennes, Wes Craven’s “Vampire in Brooklyn” with Eddie Murphy, and the groundbreaking ensemble drama “Waiting to Exhale” – a film that preceded but epitomized the term “Black girl”. magic,” King told her.
Bassett described the Forest Whitaker-directed adaptation of Terry McMillan’s popular novel as a “beautiful, earnest, funny, gripping tale.”
“We hadn’t seen those characters and those stories and all those women together at the same time because it was like women and black women couldn’t carry a story, and we proved we could,” she said.
Bassett broke ground again this year as the first actor to be recognized by film school for an appearance in a Marvel Cinematic Universe project, playing grieving mother Queen Ramonda in the Ryan Coogler movie.
