Actress Angela Bassett recounted how Laurence Fishburne stood up for her while shooting the Oscar-nominated film What’s Love Got to Do With It.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of the film, Bassett sat down with Variety to reflect on what it was like working on the film that garnered her a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Bassett was up-and-coming at the time and excited to star as Tina Turner in the biopic. The movie provided visuals to many of the traumatic experiences Turner endured while married to Ike Turner and revealed in her autobiography I, Tina.
One unforgettable scene in the movie showed Ike sexually assaulting Tina inside a recording studio. Bassett recalls the 16-hour days for the cast and crew and how they would spend the day reshooting the most minuscule scenes.
She didn’t want that for the assault scene but didn’t feel she could speak up to director Brian Gipson because she was a “new actor.” But leave it up to Fishburne, who started acting as a child in films like “Cornbread, Earl, and Me” and kept up his onscreen appearances throughout the 70s and 80s.
By 1993, Fishburne was the veteran on set, and as an established male actor, he felt more comfortable speaking up to the British director and serving as a voice for Bassett, who was just getting started.
“He was strong, he was respectful. He could bring order and he had discipline. When things got out of hand, as they did, he could bring some stoppage and clarity to the moment,” Bassett explained. “We literally worked 16-hour days on the smallest of things, like cutting a ribbon.”
Bassett added: “And whereas I could not, as an up-and-coming actor to this white male British director, Laurence could say, ‘I think we got it. We got it.’ And then we could all go home and get some rest to be ready for the next day.”
When it came to the assault scene, Bassett “wasn’t willing” to shoot the harrowing scene “over and over,” and decided to talk to Fishburne about it.
“So Laurence asked me, ‘How many times you want to do this?’ And I looked at him, he took my hand and I said, ‘Four or five,’” Bassett recalled.
“And then he told the director, like, ‘Hey man, we’re just going to do this four times. So let’s make sure we get the cameras right and we’re going to keep them outside of the studio.’”
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