Angela Bassett Says She Wasn’t “Allowed to Be Disappointed” by Oscar Loss

Angela Bassett is opening up about how it felt to lose an Oscar. In a cover story for Town & Country, the two-time Oscar nominee opens up about coming up short to Jamie Lee Curtis in a competitive best-supporting-actress race in 2023 and the ensuing discourse that followed. “I thought I was deserving,” she said.

In 2023, Bassett was nominated for a best-supporting-actress Academy Award for her role as the grieving Queen Ramonda in Black Panther 2, making her the first actor to ever earn an Oscar nomination for a Marvel film. The best-supporting-actress category was rounded out by Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin, Hong Chau for The Whale, and Stephanie Hsu and Curtis for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Heading into the Oscars, Bassett had established herself as the front-runner, winning the Critics Choice Award as well as the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. But after Curtis won the SAG Award, momentum shifted in her favor, and, riding the groundswell of support for her film, she took home the Oscar over Bassett, as Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Oscars that year.

When Curtis’s name was called at the Oscars, Bassett looked disappointed and didn’t attempt to feign excitement for Curtis, which sparked commentary. Looking back on the moment, Bassett told Town & Country that she found the reaction to her palpable disappointment “interesting.” “Interesting that I wouldn’t be allowed to be disappointed at an outcome where I thought I was deserving,” she said.

“I love applauding people. But in that moment…” she added. Bassett then began explaining how she believed she had put in the necessary work to earn recognition. “No, I have put in,” she said, standing firm in her work ethic. “Put in the time, put in good work over time. I didn’t think that was a gift. I thought it was a given.”

Bassett received her first Oscar nomination in 1994 for best actress for portraying Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, ultimately losing the trophy to Holly Hunter for The Piano. Her illustrious career includes star turns in now classic films like How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Waiting to Exhale, Boyz N the Hood, and Malcom X, as well as multiple iterations of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story franchise. She currently stars in Murphy’s 9-1-1 and Netflix’s Zero Day, acting opposite Robert De Niro in the latter. In 2024 she received an honorary Oscar, and in January of 2025, she received an honorary doctorate from Yale—her third degree from the Ivy League university.

Last year Bassett told Oprah Winfrey that she was “gobsmacked” by the loss. “I thought I handled it very well,” she said, talking to Winfrey during her OWN Spotlight series. “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.”