The real Bassett is no hound
There has been a tradition, in the post-“Little Mermaid” era of Disney animation, to style characters after the actors who voice them.
The teacup in “Beauty and the Beast,” for example, has the features of Angela Lansbury, and Genie in “Aladdin” zaps around with the franticness of Robin Williams.
That extended to the CGI-era Pixar movies, where the tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy looks a lot like Larry the Cable Guy.
So it might surprise people who stick around for the credits of “Meet the Robinsons” that the voice of Mildred – the frumpy, matronly caretaker at the orphanage – belongs to the anything-but-matronly Angela Bassett.
“I guess they did give me a pretty big butt,” says Bassett. “But at least they don’t have her stick it out at the audience with the 3-D. She does preserve some dignity.”
Bassett, the mother of 14-month-old twins with her actor-husband, Courtney Vance, did not take the “Robinsons” job because she wanted to make a movie that her children could see – the motivation for many actors.
“I’ve done a lot of movies I’ll be proud for kids to watch when they’re old enough,” says Bassett, who won acclaim as singer Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; Betty Shabazz in “Malcolm X” and “Panther”; and civil rights icon Rosa Parks in the TV movie “The Story of Rosa Parks.”
With “Meet the Robinsons,” she says, “for one, it was a character I had never played before, which is always important to me, to keep me sharp.
“But it was also the desire to be part of a well-written movie that has something really positive to say about families and about all the different ways there can be to make a family.”
Her daughter Bronwyn and son Slater were delivered by a surrogate mother.
“Meet the Robinsons” was inspired by a children’s book by William Joyce, “A Day with Wilbur Robinson.”
It’s about a little boy who is invited to spend a day with a friend, only to discover Wilbur lives with an extended family of inventors and eccentric individuals and dreamers, served and abetted by robots and an octopus butler, and entertained by a band of singing frogs.
The book didn’t exactly tell a story, director Stephen J. Anderson says, so the screenwriter “came up with the idea of it being about an orphan who was a little genius inventor, who becomes obsessed with discovering who his birth mother was and why she gave him up.
“I’m adopted, and I had those same feelings as a kid, so when I read the script in 2002, it really spoke to me,” he says. “I became really passionate about getting it made.”
Bassett felt pretty passionate herself after seeing an advance screening of the film.
“At the end, I was really tearing up, and I’ve done a lot of heavy drama on stage, I’m a real tough customer. At least I thought I was,” she says.
“But here I was crying, and I knew the story, I knew what happened. It didn’t matter. It was all brand new.”
The birthday bunch
Singer Leon Russell is 65. Actress Linda Hunt is 62. Singer Emmylou Harris is 60. Actress Pamela Reed (“Jericho”) is 58. Actor Chris Meloni (“Law and Order: Special Victims Unit”) is 46. Actor Adam Rodriguez (“CSI: Miami”) is 32. Actress Bethany Joy Lenz (“One Tree Hill”) is 26.