The film follows 11-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Palmer) as she discovers the competitive world of spelling bees. An extremely intelligent and precocious girl, Akeelah accepts the challenge of representing her school - and ultimately her community - in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Angela Bassett on Getting Inside Her Character’s Head: “You sort of dig beneath the surface and see how she ticks. You know, look at what the givens are, what it must be like to go through the process of grief. We took the pictures of a nice actor who played my husband, the photographs played Akeelah’s dad. Doing the back story and history, they were a great couple, great pair, that he secured that family, and then he was taken in this violent way. All of this is in the script and how it’s impacted her from that time to this day. She’s still grieving, she’s still nursing that pain and that hurt. Along with that, you’ve got to keep the lights on, the bills paid, and that’s taking you away also, in addition to that pain."
Getting Involved in Akeelah and the Bee: “My agent sent me this script and said the director, Doug, and producer, Sid would like to meet me. I read the script, liked it… You read so many scripts that you don’t like, that don’t spark you. Either it’s not a story you want to tell or it’s [the wrong] character. There are a lot of scripts but it doesn’t mean there are a lot of writers, there aren’t a lot of pure writers. There are a lot of actors and I don’t think you’d call everyone in a moving picture an actor, an artist. Just because you’re doing it, it doesn’t mean it’s your call to do it. I mean how many people say, ‘I always wanted to be an actor’? I can’t stand that. You think it’s so easy, but that’s the job, to make it look easy. Ballet dancers don’t make it look difficult, they make it look easy…”
Reuniting with Laurence Fishburne: Bassett was happy to have gotten the opportunity to work with her What’s Love Got to Do with It co-star on Akeelah and the Bee. The two have developed a rapport over the years and reuniting on Akeelah and the Bee was a great experience for both actors. Bassett said, “We run into each from then to now when he’s not off doing Morpheus in some exotic locale, but it was great. There’s that twinkle that’s in your eye because you know you’ve got chemistry with this person. You’ve got history with this person, you have the experience, you’re proud of them, you’re proud of this project, and you think it’s a great story to tell. It may not be a two-hander like [What’s Love Got to Do with It] but we’re here together and it’s something good.”
The Messages of Akeelah and the Bee: The film’s not just about spelling and spelling bees. There are a couple of important messages in the movie, including the need to speak properly. Bassett finds that message to be a particularly important one. “I think it’s vitally important,” said Bassett. “I agree with it. I really love proper grammar, English, professionalism…all those things.
My husband and I are writing a book together Friends, A Love Story and the woman who’s transcribing it for me, a lot of time when I’m comfortable and I’m talking, I will use a little Ebonics, but I don’t want it written. Dave Chappelle when asked at the Actors Studio was asked by that host Lipton, ‘A lot of comedians’ - and he mentioned a couple – ‘they can sound like white guys.’ And Dave Chappelle said we’re all bilingual. Denzel Washington said I can talk out of the side my mouth and win an Oscar for Training Day, but I can also perform in Julius Caesar and that’s what he means by bilingual."
Bassett continued. "I can give you the King’s English and then I can take it to the street, but do both or do one and don’t do one knowing only the street. That’s going to hold you back because what comes out is going to impress people, and it will impress them negatively. You may be brilliant but you speak a certain way and trying to get in a certain door, it’s going to hold you back.”