For Courtney B. Vance and Wife Angela Bassett, Empty Nesting Is Exciting

Your wife, Angela, just won her first Emmy (for narrating the National Geographic nature documentary Queens). Was there a lot of celebrating?

Oh, there was. It’s been 30 years — come on now. Give the lady her due, give her her hardware. It’s a testament to us.… We love what we do, and we don’t do it for this. We do it because we love to work, and we love to share our gifts with the world. And that’s who she is. We’re blessed to be able to do what we do. That’s our attitude. We have wonderful young people [18-year-old twins, daughter Bronwyn and son Slater] who are going to college now. We’re in a wonderful, wonderful place in our lives.

So you’re empty nesters now?

We’re an empty nest. We just dropped them off three weeks ago. She’s at Harvard; he’s at Yale. But it’s not cold turkey. We spent a lot of time with them. We realized we had to start to wean ourselves off them and them off of us. We were gradually getting them ready. It’s not cold turkey.

Vance attended an industry event in Hollywood, California, this January with son Slater, wife Angela Bassett, and daughter Bronwyn.

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Would you encourage or discourage them from getting into show business?

We wanted them to have a childhood. They were cutie-pies when they were little, and we made the conscious decision to move to an area where it’s a community and lets all of us get involved in the community and in the elementary schools and the school boards and all those kinds of things. I certainly didn’t want to schlep them around to auditions. Child actors growing up into themselves as adults — it’s very tricky. Very few young people can do it, have done it. We didn’t want that. [Slater] loves his music, he writes and he raps. And Bronwyn sings and acts. So they’ll get into it now. They’ll explore. They’re in the right place. I’m excited to see what they choose.

Do you have any date night plans now that the kids are out of the house?

We can do what we want to do. Angela’s schedule is very crazy, but when we have long weekends, we may just hop on the plane and go see some shows in New York. We can use the mileage and go there and hang out. We can have some events at the house and reconnect with friends that we haven’t seen because of the young people’s schedule and our schedule. We’re taking our time.

Would you like to do a project together with Angela?

We’d love to at some point. She’s just re-upped with [her role on the ABC drama] 9-1-1 for the next three seasons. The windows that she has now are on her hiatus. A lot of times, after grinding for 19 episodes, doing another project is the last thing you want to do. We’re actively looking now. We’ll time it out, see how it goes.

What’s your perspective on aging?

We’re just taking care of ourselves. The focus is the metabolism — everything slows down, so you have to change it up. We can’t eat the same way. We gotta be active, can’t just be sitting around. It’s just part of what we know we have to do for ourselves. My mother was a very big influence on us when she retired. She was more busy than she was when she was working — [volunteering at] Habitat [for Humanity], literacy programs and soup kitchens, and at the Art Institute. Things that we wanted to do and had in the back of our minds to do. There’s nothing holding us back now.