Angela Bassett Posts Emotional Tina Turner Tribute

What’s Love Got To Do With It star Angela Bassett posted an emotional tribute to Tina Turner today. As the Internet mourns the rock legend that passed away at the age of 83, the actress had some thoughts to share with Variety. Her publicist issued a statement containing ruminations on how Turner paved the way for someone like Bassett to become the mega star that she is. In her performance as the singer, the Black Panther star would get nominated for an Academy Award. So they will always be linked in excellence surrounding What’s Love Got To Do With It. Here’s what she had to say. 

“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world? Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like,” Bassett began. “Her final words to me – for me – were ‘You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world.’” 

“I shall hold these words close to my heart for the rest of my days. I am honored to have known Tina Turner. I am humbled to have helped show her to the world,” she continued. “So on today, while we mourn the loss of this iconic voice and presence, she gave us more than we could have ever asked. She gave us her whole self. And Tina Turner is a gift that will always be ‘simply the best.” Angels, sing thee to thy rest…Queen.’”

Turner’s Impact in Movies With Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Miller told Time Out magazine in 2015, “Well yes, that to us is very important. We didn’t want to fall into a kind of fairly clichéed bad guy. And we have a saying that today’s tyrant is yesterday’s hero. And if you really look at the rhythm of the way things are, that’s often the case. You have political heroes, for instance… but if you go back to the classical sense, the definition of a hero, as far as we can decide, is that they’re the agents of evolution. They are the characters by which the world changes to a new order, usually for the better. They are the agents of evolution.”

He continued, “That’s what we wanted with Tina Turner; we wanted to have the sense that before she built Bartertown, she was a genuine hero.  You could have told a story, almost like a Mad Max story, about her. But now, because she’s holdfast… One of the main reasons we cast Tina Turner is that she’s perceived as being a fairly positive persona. You don’t think of Tina Turner as someone dark. You think of the core of Tina Turner being basically a positive thing. And that’s what we wanted. We felt that she might be more tragic in that sense.”

Did you love her performance as the rock legend? Let us know down in the comments!