Fame.
Whitney Houston has one kind. Angela Bassett has another. 'Waiting to Exhale' puts them both on the brink of movie stardom. Tabloids. Scandals. No privacy. Houston is already paying the price. Can Bassett afford it?


By Jess Cagle, additional reporting by Gregg Kilday


We are waiting for Whitney Houston. Angela Bassett, her costar in Waiting to Exhale, sits patiently, quietly in full makeup. The reputably hip photographer Ruven Afanador, a tall man also wearing makeup, paces the floor of the Manhattan studio in motorcycle boots. Houston’s veteran publicist, Lois Smith, worries about the time slipping away. Assistants and photo editors look at their watches and munch on the catered Chinese food, which has begun to gel.

They’re here to photograph two women, one a pop star striding into an acting career, one an Oscar-nominated actress striding toward stardom. And against odds that are controlled by white-owned Hollywood, they are both poised to become the first women who can sustain themselves as above-the-title, African-American, sex-symbol movie stars. Ever.

It’s not an easy prize to come by. Despite Basset’s immense talent and Oscar nod for What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993) and Houston’s immense fame (80 million albums sold worldwide at last count and more than $400 million generated globally by her 1992 debut film The Bodyguard, costarring Kevin Costner), neither actress has yet sold a movie by her name alone. That chance is about to move one step closer or one step farther away, depending on the success of Waiting to Exhale. Based on the 1992 Terry McMillian novel, it is the first major Hollywood film to place middle-class black women (played by Houston, Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon) at its center. But at the moment, at this photo shoot, Bassett is waiting, and Houston’s black Rolls-Royce limousine is presumably stalled in traffic.

An hour and a half late, an entourage issues forth into the studio- the bodyguard, a beefy make-up man named Quietfire, a hairstylist, an assistant, more assistants. Then, finally, Houston herself. She whips behind a curtain into makeup and wardrobe.

When Afanador focuses his camera on the two actresses, Bassett falters occasionally, working to summon back her smile and bright eyes time and again. This is all fairly new to her, photo shoots and limousines and assistants and awards and publicists. She still shows up on time. But Houston has been here and done this. In front of a lens, her face shines as steadily and perfectly as her long, sustained final notes. It’s the kind of facial pose that Jackie Onassis used for public outings- beautiful and frozen. The camera stops. The Face morphs into severe fatigue.

Bassett graciously thanks the photographer. Houston hurries past him, into a swarm of powder and brushes. Now this writer is introduced to Houston, who, keeping her back turned, holds her stare on herself, in a mirror framed with lights. She rolls her eyes. “He’s nice,” says her publicist. “I’ve heard that before,” says Houston. Then she reluctantly turns to shake hands. The face returns for a second, maybe two.

A week later Houston will apologize for her chilliness. She will explain that she was getting ill. She will tell me bluntly that she doesn’t like the media. “Demons,” she will call us, “They’re devils to me, and they’re out to eat my flesh.”

It wasn’t always that way. In 1992, when Houston married R&B singer Bobby Brown, the press played it as “Nice girl from New Jersey meets street tough from Boston.” Since then, the couple’s life has been played out in the tabloids like a soap opera. Their clams: he’s unfaithful. He’s violent (in fact, Brown faces court dates soon for charges of misdemeanor assault in Los Angeles, and aggravated battery and disorderly conduct in Orlando, Fla.) He drinks, hence his recent trip to the Betty Ford Center. And Houston’s own publicity has been no better, it has encompassed everything from chronic lateness (she kept Nelson Mandela waiting at the White House) to an oddball report (categorically denied) about a would-be-hit-man claiming he was hired by Houston’s father to break the legs of Robyn Crawford, Houston’s executive assistant and longtime friend.

“The people that she surrounds herself with are not as cultured as she is,” says one source from the set of Waiting to Exhale. “They’re kind of gruff. And I think that’s her interior. There’s something cold about her. She’s tough.”

Houston herself might agree. “I don’t take sh-- as I used to,” she says, “and if that makes me a bitch, then so be it.” But Houston will say this during an interview that will be put off until the last minute because of her own volatile schedule and personal health crises. We plan to meet in Atlanta, where she might or might not be able to do and interview while laying down vocal tracks for her next picture, The Preacher’s Wife, costarring Denzel Washington. Directed by Penny Marshall, it’s a remake of 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife, starring Cary Grant and Loretta Young, and as a reminder that stardom does have its perks, Houston will be paid $10 million for her efforts.

In the meantime, there’s Angela Bassett. The day after the photo shoot, she’s eating breakfast in her suite at New York’s Four Seasons Hotel and watching her appearance with the rest of the Waiting to Exhale cast on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She hasn’t been burned by the spotlight yet, and you know it because there’s a man named Mark eating with her and she doesn’t tell him to hide when the reporter knocks on the door. (Bassett who is single says later, he’s a cardiologist, and just a friend.)

Though Bassett and Houston like each other and are both still close to their mothers, their similarities stop there. Basset, 37, went to Yale drama school. Houston, 32, didn’t. Bassett finished reading the novel on which Waiting to Exhale is based. Houston got halfway through. Basset’s mother isn’t a gospel singer but a divorced social worker.

Bassett was a shy child and found her voice performing for student competitions and church conventions. She still recites from memory long passages of poetry by Langston Huges in a booming, sweeping voice.

What’s Love Got To Do With It, her first leading film role, gave her both an Oscar nomination and an introduction to the racial politics of Hollywood. In a marketing move that generated charges of racism against Disney, the studio advertised the film in one poster without a picture of Bassett- just a generic line drawing of a woman’s profile, disembodied lips against a white background. “After all the hard work, I wanted to see my picture up there!” says Bassett, laughing about it now. “You finally get a lead in a film, then to see a line drawing and it doesn’t even look like a black woman.”

Despite Bassett's heat, her follow-up films, the comedy Vampire in Brooklyn and the sci-fi thriller Strange Days, both fizzled at the box office. “Getting there is one thing,” says Bassett, “maintenance is totally different. That’s the hard part. But I know I’ve been blessed. I keep my eye on the big picture.” The big picture, however, could change right along with Bassett’s fortunes. Though it cost just over $14 million, Waiting to Exhale, starring four black women, will have a disproportionately huge impact on the futures of most black actresses in Hollywood. “For God’s sake,” says talent manager Dolores Robinson, who is coexecutive producer Montel Williams’ upcoming TV series Matt Waters, “if this movie doesn’t make money, it won’t happen again in this century.”

Neither, it seems, will the interview with Basset’s costar. Houston has taken ill in Atlanta and is often unreachable, even by phone. At least there’s a character witness available.

Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother, slowly enters her living room with an injured ankle and a crutch. She worries about her daughter, the schedules, the traveling, and the juggling of time for her 2-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina. Cissy tries to explain Whitney’s rude behavior at the shoot. “She had a video shoot, then she had to come to you and she was late,” she says in a soft, high voice. Cissy Houston’s New Jersey town house, with its all-white decor looks out on the Manhattan skyline, and the spectacular views are reflected on a mirrored dining room wall. A white grand piano sits in the corner, and Whitney’s sister-in-law Donna Houston, who runs the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, sits at the living room’s wet bar.

“They pull her everywhere,” says Cissy, “ and she’s going through her own personal things right now.” “Personal things” means Whitney’s marriage to Bobby Brown, 26, whose sins against decorum and alleged dalliances with other women have been widely chronicled. Cissy says she reads about her daughter in tabloids. “It’s very difficult," says Cissy. “We all feel what she feels.” “We” means family members, many of who are employed by Whitney (including her father, who heads her company, Nippy Inc.). Cissy insists that Whitney’s entourage isn’t out of hand. “She has somebody that does her hair and somebody that does her makeup,” says Cissy. “She likes massages in between. That is really all that she has there. And she has Robyn and Laurie. That’s not as many as, what’s her name?”

Sharon Stone?

Cissy laughs. “Sharon Stone!” she says and from across the room Donna offers another example, “Eddie Murphy.” More laughter.

“And she has a bodyguard,” says Cissy.

When Cissy, a gospel singer, was touring with the Sweet Inspirations in the late 1960’s she often took her daughter with her on the road and to recording sessions, but Cissy discouraged Whitney from show business. “I know how mean people are,” says Cissy. “They want to see you go, but they like to see you fall.”‘ She shakes her head and frowns, and says sadly and sweetly, “ Why, I don’t know. I don’t know why that is.”

Though Whitney Houston was expected to return to New York City or New Jersey by Sunday, the deadline for a face to face interview, she’s still sick and recuperating at a friend’s house in Atlanta. The interview must take place on the phone.

“Are you going to write me up right?” she says in a quick but scratchy voice. “Because I’m telling you something, they have been f----ing me up lately.”

While she says she has no intention of trading in singing for acting (“Music is my life...Sometimes I sing and don’t speak all day”), she did watch Bassett closely for acting tips. “Angela should get an Oscar nomination for this,” she says. “That girl is amazing. I don’t sing a song the same way every night; different emotions come into play. Watching Angela do that in action with words helped me a lot.”

Shortly into the interview, Houston is asked whether she’s read the Dec.18 PEOPLE cover story about her.

“What are they saying about me now?” she says weakly. “Something about me and my husband, I know it.” The cover in fact, poses the question “So why is she back with bad boy Bobby Brown?”

“We all have our problems and troubles,” she says, her volume and energy rising. “All I want to do is to be able to work them out in private… They say he cheats on me. I haven’t caught him yet. If I had, I’d break his f---ing neck…I got projects coming up for kids that are incredible, for child abuse and things of that nature.. And all these people want to write about is…” Her voice cracks and she starts to cry. “Who we’re f---ing and, who we ain’t f---ing and all this other bullsh-- and I’m tired of it. I know who he comes home to.”

When she has read a passage from the story repeating rumors that their marriage is a “sham” designed to conceal a lesbian relationship with Robyn Crawford her voice falls to a whisper.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God… I am not a lesbian. I wish they’d stop saying it. I have a daughter, for God’s sake. What do they mean by this? They write this sh-- and one day I’m gonna have to talk to my daugher… Please. I’m so pissed off right now. Excuse me.”

She goes on hold for a minute or so and comes back with a tearstained voice. “I do not share my bed with anybody but my husband. I really, really pray they would stop doing that to me… How dare they put me on the cover of their magazine? I didn’t authorize them to put my picture on their cover. Can I sue for that?’’

She’s told she can’t.

“Hah! Because I’m public property.”

So what can this writer say about her marriage?

“No,” she says. “I don’t want anybody to know anything, because if they do they start writing more on that. We just want ’em to think we’re still apart. F--- ‘em.”

Waiting to Exhale has been overshadowed by Houston’s persona everywhere except in the film itself. Houston blends into the ensemble, and anyone from another planet who saw the film would hardly notice her, except to note that she’s not a bad actress, and she’s lovely to look at.

What you really notice is this: African-American actresses have never looked more like movie stars than in Waiting, and this points to an ugly pop reality. Since black actresses are usually supporting actresses, and lighting is designed around white stars, the lighting needs of darker-skinned actors are often ignored. “Black skin absorbs light differently,” says the film’s director, actor Forest Whitaker. So Toyomichi Kurita, Waiting’s director of photography, filtered the light softly through Chinese lanterns and used amber-and straw-colored gels that favored the women’s skin. “You want to find the contours,” says Whitaker, “and put a shadow across their face and still be able to see all the details. It’s difficult.”

The uniqueness of the film's look only underscores it status as a Hollywood rarity- a high gloss black romance. “It’s not a movie from the hood,” says Terry McMillan, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bass (The Joy Luck Club). “These women are pretty much educated. It’s about their self-esteem in terms of their survival and not just about survival itself, which is what African-American movies seem to be about these days.”

While Waiting has sent test audiences, particularly women, into rounds of cheering, predominantly white test audiences in Long Island and Kansas City gave the film lower marks, confirming some of the studio’s fears about the movie's crossover appeal. “Let’s face it,” says McMillan. “Long Island. Ugh. You have these people who could really care less what happens in the black community. They don’t care what happens to black people, poor, rich, whatever.”

America’s major movie stars- the kind who can get a $50 million movie produced simply by signing to do it- reflect the nation’s power structure. Most of them are white males (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks). A few white women share their ranks (Demi Moore, Julia Roberts); so do a few black men (Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes.) One black woman, Whoopi Goldberg, is on that olympus, but she’s still perceived as a comedian within the industry. Houston will enter their ranks if and when the public takes her seriously as an actress. Whether Bassett scales those heights comes down to one ironic truth- whether she can bring white people into the theater. “I never sought celebrity,” say Bassett. She mentions a dinner, at which Houston was honored, that she’d attended that night before. She waded through paparazzi. She swam through flashbulbs. Strangers clamored for her attention. She didn’t mind it much. “I don’t take it for granted,” Bassett says. “It’s all encouragement. But sometimes it’s as if I’ve eaten a five-pound bag of sugar. I like a little sugar, but try eating five pounds of it at one time. Sometimes it’s a little much.”

“Don’t you wonder why it never happened before?” asks Houston at the end of our phone conversation, still talking a river and responding to a question about black female movie stars. Houston recently optioned the rights to an upcoming biography of actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge (Porgy and Bess), who died an apparent suicide in 1965. “She was more talented than Marilyn Monroe, and Marilyn Monroe was an icon and still is today. Where’s Dorothy? In obscurity. How come people don’t know about her like they know about Marilyn?”

Houston says that Time Magazine recently misquoted her saying, “White America tried to f--- - with me.”

I didn’t say white America,” she says bitterly, “I said the media. Jet, Ebony, and Essence, Upscale, all-black publications all have positive things to say about what Bobby and I do not what we do in our bedroom. I don’t know any black people that own Star magazine, or any Enquirers or Vanity Fairs.”

Finally, I ask her if she has advice for her friend Bassett, for whom the tabloids will be lying in wait. “Roll with the punches, girlfriend,” says Houston. Here tears have cleared and she’s laughing now. “That’s all I can say. Roll with the punches, and call me up any time you need me.”