Angela Bassett is certainly practicing some kind of voodoo on FX’s “American Horror Story.” On a show haunted by the campy ghosts of Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in their harridan heyday, Bassett grounds the enterprise from going so far over the top the producers would have to send a search party.
As real-life New Orleans sorceress Marie Laveau, Bassett, completely stunning at 55, charts new territory. She poisons Kathy Bates, horrifyingly boorish as real-life serial killer Mme. LaLaurie. She throws some shade at Jessica Lange, brittle as a snapped bone as fictitious Fiona Goode, the hissing queen of witches. Still, Bassett, who fought tooth-and-nail with Laurence Fishburne in her legendary performance as Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” was nervous about working with these actresses.
“My knees were shaking in my first scene with Kathy,” she says. “And her, making a meal of it. Thank God I was wearing a hoop skirt.”
It must be part of Bassett’s charm that, after acting opposite Fishburne and Denzel Washington (in “Malcolm X”), she can still be intimidated by other actors. She was even nervous about coming on “AHS” because it was so scary.
Clad in Caribbean colors and striking tignons — the headscarves worn by law by Creole women to not tempt white men — Bassett’s Laveau is in keeping with history. The real-life Laveau also ran a beauty salon that catered to wealthy white families. Bassett added her own touches — the long, slender braids that enhance her allure. The actress had worn braids before, in “Strange Days” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” but she wanted these to look different.
“I had to figure out how to make that happen. Between Monte, the head hair guy, and my relationship with [celebrity hairstylist] Kim Kimble, who does Beyoncé, we were able to think it through. They’re twists.”
While filming the show in New Orleans, Bassett has immersed herself in the city’s music. Her tour guide is her real-life musician friend Trombone Shorty, with whom she hangs out in French Quarter clubs.
“He is an ambassador for the culture,” Bassett says. “It’s just alive and rich, and you find all kinds of people up on each other — upper-class, middle-class — all through the strata.”
Bassett lives in LA with her husband, actor Courtney B. Vance, and their seven-year-old twins, Slater and Bronwyn. It’s a long marriage, 16 years — no easy feat — and a happy one, judging from the expression on Bassett’s face when Vance won a Tony Award this year for his performance in Nora Ephron’s play “Lucky Guy.”
“I was so pleased for him,” she says. “Doing the play was a big commitment for him. He’s an involved dad. To leave home and the kids for six months. But he enjoyed himself and got back to the stage, where he shines.”
She says the secret of a successful marriage between performers is flexibility. “You don’t try to stop the other from living their life. You take care of responsibilities at home,” she says. “But your artistic soul has to be satisfied.”
Bassett says she is achieving that kind of satisfaction on “AHS.” “What the show has afforded me is a great character, a great script and great comrades,” she says. She prefers working on a project “where your passion is on display.”
That passion was fully realized in her sizzling performance as Turner, a characterization so embraced by the public that it still bowls her over. “I wasn’t known as a dancer or a singer,” she says. “That’s the great thing about not expecting much.”
In addition to Laveau and Turner, Bassett has played other iconic African-American women — Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz among them. “It’s a compliment. I consider it an honor,” she says.
Next up for Bassett is the holiday feature “Black Nativity,” an adaptation of a Langston Hughes play that co-stars Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson. Bassett does her own singing — with Hudson.
“That was nerve-wracking,” she says with a laugh. “When you sing with Jennifer Hudson, that’s throwing you in the deep end. I didn’t even want to rehearse. It turned out great, or so I hear. They send me little e-mails: ‘You look good. You sound good.’ ”