Angela Bassett heads to space in '9-1-1's' 'out of this world' season 9 premiere
“9-1-1” is reaching new heights this season, sending Angela Bassett’s Athena Grant into space, but her co-stars say she’s as grounded as anyone.
“I work with the nicest people, like, they’re so lovely,” Jennifer Love Hewitt told our entertainment reporter Courtney Tezeno at the ABC Summer Soiree.
She continued, “Angela Bassett is everything that you want her to be and more. I still pinch myself every time I get a scene with her. I'm like, are you sure I get to be in the scene? Like, really, with Angela? Okay! So I feel very lucky, and we have the most amazing writers and storylines. It’s just great. And our show has a lot of heart which I love.”
Bassett’s onscreen children, played by Elijah M. Cooper and Corinna Massiah, are also in awe of the Oscar-nominee.
“Angela’s the GOAT. She really is incredible,” Elijah said. “She has so much to share. First day I was in there, I was nervous to act with her, and she is like, we’re all here doing the same thing. This is all of our job, we all deserve to be here.”
“When it comes to Angela, I really just study here and I don’t know if she finds it weird or if I’m staring at her weird sometimes,” Corrinne said. “She kind treats [acting] like a dance sometimes, you can see her brain working, the way she acts it out before the director says action or whatever, I really just internalized that. You can’t just do it all in your head, you gotta move around, you gotta feel it, it’s a very physical thing.”
Season 9 of “9-1-1” is going to be a hard one for the Grant family, especially after the loss of Bobby Nash, played by Peter Krause, who died last season sacrificing himself to save Chimney (Kenneth Choi).
“I think you’ll see how we navigate such a big loss in our family and how we all handle grief differently, how we deal with it. I’m excited for audiences to see grief represented in different ways,” Corrinne said.
But it wouldn’t be “9-1-1” without something wild happening to the team.
Elijah teased, “Episode one is pretty crazy, episode one is out of this world. Episode one we have Mark Consuelos. There’s a lot of fun that’s going on. There’s going to be a lot of change, a lot of growth. There’s going to be a lot of rebuilding. I think people are really going to [like it].”
As extreme as the situations are, the real power of the series is the humanity of the characters.
“I think what's special about the show for people is we will all have an emergency situation at one point or another and not know what that's gonna be for us and how we're gonna deal with it,” Jennifer Love Hewitt said. “But in real life, we don't know that person. We don't know their story. We don't know how their day started before they got to us. And, you know, taking care of us, and I love this show because you get to know that. You get to know, maybe, who some of these people are.”
“9-1-1” season 9 premieres tonight on ABC.
