Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks as always for clicking and listening along.

I am so excited to bring you my conversation today with one of my favorite actresses

and one of the most accomplished actresses in all of Hollywood.

She is the great Angela Bassett.

She's starring as the president of the United States in the buzzed-about new Netflix series Zero Day, which stars Robert De Niro.

It follows the aftermath of a massive, devastating cyber attack in the United States and what would

happen if something like that took place now. So she plays the sitting president of the United

States when this happens and she calls in a former president of the United States Robert De Niro

to lead the investigation. Super gripping six-part series, De Niro's first ever series that he's participated in.

Great cast.

Jesse Plemons is in it.

Connie Britton's in it.

Has a really, really good cast and a great kind of gripping storyline.

So we get into that, and we get into her backstory.

She was raised in St. Petersburg, Florida,

superstar, straight A student, student government, drama club, cheerleader. She did it all.

Went on to Yale, where she got her undergraduate degree and then her master's in fine arts

from the famed school of drama, where she also, by the way, met her

husband, the actor Courtney B. Vance, started on the stages of New York before moving west to

Hollywood. My favorite movie of all time, or maybe one of them, is Boys in the Hood. She played

the mother of Trey, who was played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the movie. I loved her in that so much. It's the first time I noticed her, and she says it was really her first big role. And then they started to come from that. Breakout is 1993. She plays Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It. But interesting to hear her discuss that that didn't necessarily open all the doors of Hollywood for her, despite the fact she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar.

...