Actress Angela Bassett is making her directorial debut with a TV movie about Whitney Houston on Lifetime. Bassett worked with Houston on the 1995 film Waiting to Exhale. Bassett said of her time with Houston, “She was very young and at the top of her game. It was a delightful time. She was amazing to be around.”
The problem is, the biopic Bassett is directing doesn’t focus on those good times. It centers on her crazy-ass relationship with her husband Bobby Brown. Houston’s mother, gospel legend Cissy Houston said “no one connected with this movie knew Whitney or anything about her relationship with Bobby.” She added, “Please, please let her rest.” Bassett admitted to spending “a little time [with] her” but offers her own experience with celebrity as an advantage to the story. Bassett said she knows what it’s like “being a black woman that came up in a little hometown.” Second problem might be fact-checking. Houston grew up outside of Newark, New Jersey, in East Orange, New Jersey, population 69,824. We’ve never heard anyone refer to East Orange so quaintly as “a little hometown.”
