Courtney B. Vance — the long-time partner of Angela Bassett — was asked for his take on the Will Smith slap. The “Office Christmas Party” actor likened the Academy Awards debacle to a time when he and Bassett encountered an unruly fan at the airport. After approaching the couple at an inopportune time, the fan was denied an autograph and “wanted to provoke” Bassett, as Vance recalled during his April 1 appearance on “The Breakfast Club.” As the fan shouted at the “Waiting to Exhale” star, Vance worked quickly to remove Bassett from the potentially volatile situation. “I said, ‘Angie, just keep walking, baby. Just keep walking. We’re going to our car,” he recalled.
“The Preacher’s Wife” actor spoke about knowing the difference between taking a strong stance when offended, and letting cooler heads prevail. “Sometimes you just gotta just walk away,” Vance said on the popular radio show. He did not want his wife to end up in a situation similar to Smith’s. “What we don’t wanna see is Angela Bassett pimp-slapping [anybody],” Vance jokingly said. “We’re not going down like that.”
In 2014, Bassett was involved in her own celebrity drama when the late Bobbi Kristina Brown lashed out at her online. Brown tweeted that Bassett was a “b***h” after the actor left her out of a Whitney Houston biopic, per E! News. Fortunately, once her temper simmered a few days later, Brown apologized on Twitter for her inflammatory words.
