Topics: Film and TV, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Celebrity, Black Panther, Oscars
Angela Bassett has said that she had a much better experience on the set of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever than Anthony Hopkins had during his time in the Thor franchise.
Here’s the trailer for Bassett’s film, in case you haven’t seen it yet:
Bassett is obviously doing something right, as she’s been nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Wakanda Forever, but she says that she feels ‘sorry’ for Hopkins, who famously said there was ‘no acting required’ for his role in the Thor films due to the amount of green-screen work he was doing.
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Obviously, Hopkins is no stranger to an Academy Award himself, having picked up the Best Actor award twice, once for The Silence of the Lambs and again for The Father in 2021.
He’s also been nominated another four times.
However, he described the green-screen acting of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as ‘pointless’ back in 2021, stating that during his time shooting as Odin in the Thor franchise he just had to ‘sit on the throne’ and ‘shout a bit’.
Bassett said that she can sympathise with Hopkins, but said that on Wakanda Forever the actors were made to feel a lot more like they were in the imaginary world, claiming that the production team tried extra hard to make that possible.
She said: “The throne room was there, the floor of red clay, the elevation with the Dora Milaje flanking around, the grand doors that they walk through.
“So maybe you don't see the world of Wakanda, but we had that.
"When Shuri and I went out into the wild, we had trees and bushes and water for yards and yards and yards, and Namor came up out of the water and flew to us.
"We had the entire ship, and the attention to detail inside of it was just magnificent."
If you’ve not seen the film, you probably won’t understand a lot of that, but she’s basically saying that the world felt real, even if much of it was created on the computers.
Referencing Hopkins’ comments, Bassett said: "I had it much better than Anthony Hopkins. I'm sorry for him.
"We had Shuri's lab. We had the elevator opening up. We had a fake elephant and her baby come in.
“Of course, they made the generated elephant later, but at least we had an elephant to respond to."
Anyway, whatever they did on set clearly had an impact, because the film has been nominated for five Oscars, including becoming the first Marvel flick to garner an acting nomination at the awards.
Bassett is up for the Best Supporting Actress award, her second nomination in total.
As well as that, there are a number of nods for Wakanda Forever in categories such as Original Song, Make-up and Hairstyling, and Costume Design.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is available to watch on Disney+ now.
