She is back on the big screen as an assassin, is reportedly the highest-paid female
Actor of colour ever for a TV drama – and is moving into producing. She discusses fairness, film-making and why acting is still her first love
![Angela Bassett on success, salaries and staying power: ‘I gotta find a new queen to play!’](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/470386780cc9cbf6aa6910cf0dcbaf072b6a29d8/0_600_4664_2798/master/4664.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=8f8d734fce85acbf899ddec2ab5639b2)
Even via a video call, from an anonymous-looking office in
New York, against a backdrop of stacked cardboard boxes, Angela Bassett exudes glamour. Dressed down in a sleeveless white top, her hair long and dead straight, she still looks like a million dollars. But it is more Bassett’s irrepressibly expressive personality that leaps out of the screen. She is too self-deprecating and quick to laugh to be hammy, but even out of character she speaks as if she is delivering a monologue: clear and authoritative, with dramatic emphases on certain words, her face and hands in constant motion.
When I ask if there are any roles left she would like to play, she says: “I used to say I wanted to play a queen, because I thought it would be really good for audiences to see a Black
Queen on their screens, you know, for people who grew up looking at queens not looking too much like me.”