Angela Bassett said she was “gobsmacked” when she lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Jamie Lee Curtis at the 2023 Academy Awards: “A supreme disappointment.”
“I was gobsmacked,” the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star recounted on March 5 episode of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Spotlight. “It was—of course—a supreme disappointment, and disappointment is human.”
However, Angela Bassett believes she handled the loss “very well,” keeping her emotions toned down as the Everything Everywhere All at Once actress took the stage to accept the award.
“That was my intention, to handle it very well,” the 65-year-old continued. “Yes, I was disappointed and I handled it like a human being.”
Bassett also noted that it was important for both herself and her 18-year-old twins Bronwyn and Slater, who she shares with actor Courtney B. Vance, that she approached the situation with grace.
“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 told Winfrey. “We’re going to smile, we’re going to be gracious, we’re going to be kind, we’re going to party anyway.”
Bassett’s nomination for her portrayal of Queen Ramonda came more than three decades after her first Oscar nod, when she played late singer Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It. At the 1994 award show, Bassett lost the Best Actress Oscar to The Piano‘s Holly Hunter.
But the Waiting to Exhale alum did end up receiving her flowers in the form of an honorary Oscar earlier this year at the 2024 Governors Awards, an annual celebration for the governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“I have considered acting my calling and not just my career,” Bassett told the audience at the January ceremony. “I do this work because I find it meaningful and I hope in some way that it makes a difference and has an impact. To be recognized in this way for what I love doing is truly wonderful and I am beyond grateful.”
Addressing the momentous occasion, Bassett added that she hopes the entertainment industry is “taking the necessary steps toward a future in which it is the norm, not the exception, to see and embrace one another’s full humanity, stories and perspectives.”
“My prayer is that we leave this industry more enriched, forward-thinking and inclusive than we found it,” Bassett shared, “a future where there won’t be a first or an only, or suspense around whether history will be made with a nomination or a win.”