Now and Ben: Angela Bassett on Zero Day, Strange Days and The Simpsons

Kermode & Mayo’s Take

Sony Music

Tv & Film, Film Reviews, Tv Reviews, Film Interviews

4.4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve got a bona fide icon for you in today’s Now & Ben—a movie star of four decades known for tackling tough female characters in films like ‘Boyz n the Hood’, ‘Malcolm X’, ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’ and ‘Black Panther’. She is the one and only Angela Bassett. This time, she plays US president Evelyn Mitchell in ‘Zero Day’, the new Netflix thriller series in which America is struck by a cyber attack. Managing the crisis, Bassett’s president re-enlists beloved ex-President Geroge Mullen (Robert De Niro) to help still the public panic and discover the mysterious perpetrators. Angela talks to Ben about the role and her longstanding talent for playing powerful women onscreen—including Michelle Obama in ‘The Simpsons’, of course. She tells Ben about the real women who have inspired her, plus we get the lowdown on working with De Niro—and fans of Kathryn Bigelow’s undersung millennium tech thriller ‘Strange Days’, listen up: we’ve got a treat for you... Listen out for more of Ben’s conversations with cinema’s most exciting creative talents dropping into the feed every ‘Now and Ben’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:24.4	Apply with £100,000 annual income or £100,000 savings or investments with HSBC UK or Premier status abroad.
0:30.2	Hello and welcome to another episode of Now and Ben.
0:33.5	In these nuggets of movie geek goodness, our super sub Ben Bailey Smith brings extra guests to the take feed who we just had to call her while they were in town.
0:41.3	In this episode, Ben sits down with an actress whose four-decade career in films from Malcolm X to what's Love Got to Do With It to Black Panther has made her Hollywood royalty.
0:51.1	She is Angela Bassett.
0:52.9	I'm going to talk Zero Day, the new Netflix thriller
0:56.5	in which America is struck by a cyber attack, and Bassett is the president managing the crisis.
1:02.6	Well, there are a lot of things in Zero Day that I'm glad of fiction, but I wish that bit wasn't.
1:06.3	Look out for more of Ben's conversations with film and TV talents dropping into the take feed every now and Ben.
1:16.1	Angela, I've literally just finished watching episode two of Zero Day and the nerves are sort of jangling a little bit, man.
1:26.8	It's like it's entertaining, it's entertaining, it's exciting, it's tense,
1:29.9	but it also feels like it's an important story to tell right now somehow.
1:34.6	I was just wondering, was that one of the elements that made you want to take this on?
1:37.8	Or was it the cast, the director, or the role itself, or all of the above?
	...

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