Drama Diva Angela Bassett on Returning to Broadway, Overcoming Her Fears and Climbing The Mountaintop

From rolling down the river as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It to witnessing the moonwalk as Katherine Jackson in the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream and picking up the pieces after her husband's assassination as Betty Shabazz in Malcom X, Angela Bassett has made a film career out of portraying real women. Now she's playing opposite a real-life figure in The Mountaintop. Bassett plays a hotel maid at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. (portrayed by the towering Samuel L. Jackson) spent the last night of his life. Before taking her final bow on the Great White Way (The Mountaintop closes on January 22), Bassett sat down with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek to chat about stage fright, her twins with hubby Courtney B. Vance and dreaming up Waiting To Exhale: The Musical.