Angela Bassett talks new film 'Olympus Has Fallen'; Chris Brown and Rihanna

theGRIO REPORT - During an interview with theGrio, Angela Bassett talks about playing a character initially meant for a male actor in 'Olympus Has Fallen,' and weighs in on Chris Brown and Rihanna...

Courtney Garcia

Mar 20, 2013

Few film roles exceed Angela Bassett’s qualifications, even those intended for a man.

The Oscar-nominated actress returns to the screen this month in Olympus Has Fallen portraying the director of the Secret Service, a position never occupied by a female and a character initially written for a male actor.

But so what, Bassett says. There’s really nothing special about it other than it’s never been done.

“It’s significant in that, in this fictionalized world, this barrier has been obliterated,” the 54-year-old actress tells theGrio. “At times, we’re fond of saying that life imitates art or art imitates life. Hopefully, one day life will imitate this art, where it’s just the best person for the job.”

The film, opening in theaters Friday, imagines a colossal terrorist attack on the White House in which the entire capital city is overtaken by Korean extremists. It is the latest project by Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, and brings the action thriller to the max with its continually rising stakes and shifting power struggles. Bassett’s character, alongside the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) and other military commanders, is forced to negotiate with the enemy and make life or death decisions on behalf of the country when the president (Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage.

From the outset, Bassett seems quite comfortable in her high-level get-up, regardless if she is the first of her kind. As the actress points out, change in the world sometimes begins as ideas set in motion by the camera, and perhaps that’s where this leads.

“We’ve seen us say, ‘Oh, we’ve never had an African-American male as president of the United States,’ when we saw Morgan in Deep Impact, or Dennis Haysbert in 24,” she recalls. “‘Oh wow! They’re bold right there! What is that?’ But then you begin to see these images, and it’s not so odd or scary.”

As a movie star who has filled the shoes of many iconic figures – Rosa Parks, Dr. Betty Shabazz, and Tina Turner to name a few – Bassett can certainly traverse the line between truth and fiction. Particularly by playing Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do with It, Bassett has recognized the significance her job can have in the lives of others.

In an interview this March, she was asked about the impact that role bore on the plight of abused women, and also addressed concerns with the very public display of domestic violence that played out in the Chris Brown-Rihanna relationship.

Bassett described the situation as “disturbing,” and what’s more, she can relate because her own mother had a similar experience.

“It’s wrong,” she comments about Brown’s actions. “It’s naïve. It’s evil. It’s no good. I hope he learned a lesson. I hope they both learned a lesson. My mother taught me [about it] when I was younger because she had gone through it in her second marriage. She annulled it after seven days because he hit her. And it was like, ‘Oh ma, we want to have a dad! We want to live in a house and have dreams!’ She said, ‘Grown people don’t beat grown people,’ and it was as simple as that. Communicate. Talk. You’re you. I’m me. We don’t beat each other. It just doesn’t happen and that stuck for me, so hopefully they’ll come to that.”