It’s rare that superhero movies are nominated outside of the technical categories at the Academy Awards, but the Black Panther movies have been among the exceptions. In this case, we’re specifically talking about how Angela Bassett was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Ramonda in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the 30th of the Marvel movies in order. However, Bassett didn’t take home the golden trophy that night, and she recently recalled how she reacted to that moment, with “a supreme disappointment” summarizing things nicely.
The actress revisited this memory while speaking with Oprah Winfrey in an episode of OWN Spotlight, with the host saying that she was beside herself when Angela Bassett’s name wasn’t called during that portion of the 95th Academy Awards presentation. Bassett responded:
I was gobsmacked! I was. I thought I handled it very well. 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.
To be fair, Bassett had already won a Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Movie Award for her reprisal of Ramonda, among other accolades, so I can’t fault her or Oprah for thinking she was going to win the Academy Award. However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences instead gave it to Jamie Lee Curtis for her performance as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in Everything Everywhere All at Once. It ended up being a big night for that movie, as Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan also respectively took home the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor Oscars. The other competitors in the Best Supporting Actress category were Curtis’ Everything Everywhere All at Once costar Stephanie Hsu, The Whale’s Hong Chau and The Banshees of Inisherin’s Kerry Condon.
This was Angela Bassett’s second time being nominated for an Academy Award, the first time being for Best Actress in What’s Love Got to Do with It back in 1994, and she was also the first actor to be nominated for a performance for a Marvel movie. Despite the disappointment of not winning for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, she knew it was important to handle the loss with grace “for myself and for my children who were there with me,” adding:
There are going to be these moments of disappointment that you’ll experience, but how do you handle yourself in the midst of them? We’re going to smile, we’re going to be gracious, we’re going to be kind, we’re going to party anyway.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was Bassett’s third time playing Ramonda, following her debut as the character in 2018’s Black Panther and cameoing in Avengers: Endgame the year after. The sequel saw the technologically-advanced country’s Sovereign Queen regnant still coping with the death of her son T’Challa, while also trying to convince her daughter Shuri to resume research into recreating the heart-shaped herb so that Wakanda will have a Black Panther again. As if those things weren’t bad enough, then the conflict with Namor broke out, and Ramonda drowned in her kingdom’s palace while saving Riri William’s life.
Angela Bassett certainly didn’t hold back with this performance despite originally being “mortified” by her character’s story, but alas, the Academy Award just wasn’t hers to win this time around. The good news is that she’s being presented with an Academy Honorary Award. You can see that happen on the 2024 TV schedule when the 96th Academy Awards air this Sunday on ABC. Remember that you can also use a Disney+ subscription to stream Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and other MCU content.
