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Academy Award nominee and all-around badass - especially in American Horror Story - Angela Bassett joins the Transformers film franchise by lending her voice to the Deception, Shatter, in Bumblebee. The movie takes place in 1987 and follows Bumblebee to Earth after narrowly surviving and escaping an epic battle between the Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron. But he's far from safe at that point. Shatter and her sidekick Dropkick (voiced by Justin Theroux) are on his tail, and Shatter is particularly skilled when it comes to manipulating human beings in order to get more information on Bumblebee's whereabouts.

With Bumblebee now in theaters theaters, I got a little time to chat with Bassett about finding her Decepticon voice, working with director Travis Knight from opposite sides of the country, the big difference between voicing a character in this film compared to the other voice work she's done before, being embraced by the Transformers and Marvel fan communities, and also what the term "Oscar movie" means to her. You can hear about all of that in the video interview at the top of this article and for more on Bumblebee, click here for my conversation with Knight.

Here’s the official synopsis for Bumblebee:

On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug.

 

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