The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon has its celebrities-doing-celebrity-impressions formula down to a science. But on Friday, actor Keke Palmer advanced the field even further with a revelatory Angela Bassett impression you’ve just got to see.
It’s an act Palmer started doing as a child on-set alongside Queen Latifah, and actually debuted to the public on Latifah’s talk show in 2013.
“Ever since I was a kid, I would always do this Angela Bassett impression for her, and literally every time we work together, she’s always like, ‘Do the Angela! Do the Angela!’” Palmer explained of how she polished the performance to perfection.
The spot-on imitation is of Bassett as seen in the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. For those unfamiliar, the scene Palmer reimagined involves Katherine Jackson (Bassett) discovering her husband Joe (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) has cheated on her.
“You lie…and you cheat…And I don’t want you, I don’t want you!” Palmer bellowed, much to the audiences delight. She chased it with her Shakira and Cher impressions, which are pretty great too. But wow, that Angela is everything.
