Angela Bassett is a first-time Emmy Award winner after taking home the award for best narrator at the 2024 Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday. The actress was nominated for her work on National Geographic‘s Queens.
“It feels good; really, really good,” Bassett said in her acceptance speech. “Thank you to National Geographic, Wild Star Film, and all the directors — all women — who brought this incredible story, this incredible docuseries centered on the ferocious and magnificent things in the animal kingdom. I couldn’t be more thrilled and more grateful.”
Bassett first said no to the project, telling The Hollywood Reporter in a previous interview, “It was summertime. It was hiatus [for 9-1-1]. It had been a long season. I was looking forward to going on vacation, spending time with the family, and downtime from work because it’s a continuous roller coaster. But they came back around and sent me the sizzle reel and I said, ‘OK, let me put my full attention on this for a moment and see what the project is exactly.” Once I did that, it didn’t pass me by.’”
Queens, a seven-part series, tells the story of animal matriarchies across the globe and features an all-female production team, which Bassett told THR was “one of the big draws and highlights.”
“We don’t work for these, but we receive them for all the hard work that we do,” Bassett said of her win in the Emmy press room. “Of course, it’s not work that you do alone, even though it’s a narration, but there’s a whole team that pursued me and believed in me, fought for me, and worked with me to tell this amazing story of females in the wild kingdom, led by an all-female-led production team team, a first in wildlife documentary filmmaking. So that was pretty inspiring to me in and of itself.”
Bassett has received a total of nine Emmy nominations, including a 2023 nomination for best narrator for her work on Good Night Oppy.
