Angela Bassett ’s career took off in the 1990s with films including What’s Love Got to Do with It – which earned the actress her first Oscar nomination — Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back . But her success in just the past half-dozen years has managed to surpass the Yale Drama School graduate’s initial rise to fame. In the latest example of a surge that began with 2018’s Black Panther , Bassett’s powerful, mellifluous voice provides the narration for a groundbreaking Emmy-contending National Geographic wildlife documentary series, Queens , which chronicles the natural world and its distaff leaders through a uniquely female lens.

Related Stories Documentary In 'Queens,' National Geographic's Emmy-Contending Documentary Series, Female Leaders Rule The Natural World Casting Awkwafina, Henry Golding, Florence Pugh, Issa Rae, James Marsden & Justin Theroux Join Antoni Porowski In 'No Taste Like Home' A lioness shows aggression towards the pride male. National Geographic for Disney/Millie Marsden Bassett’s voice illuminates stories of species as diverse as elephants, hyenas, whales, lions and bears and how they are led by females with a range of leadership styles. It’s another breaking of the mold of traditional natural history filmmaking, which has historically used a man as a “voice of God” narrator.

Perhaps Bassett’s work can now be considered “voice of Goddess.” It ranges from dramatic to apprehensive, exuberant to playful, and com.