American Fiction, the deeply satirical film about a writer’s experience being pigeonholed into making stereotypically “Black” art, became the unexpected darling of this year’s award season, with five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and noms for lead actor Jeffrey Wright and supporting actor Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction has put its acclaimed cast in the spotlight with a searing, thoughtful statement on race in America. 

Yet for Leslie Uggams, who plays Agnes, the mother of Wright’s Monk, the well-deserved praise for a sneakily smart statement on race wrapped in entertainment is hardly a new endeavor––it’s been a through line in her 50-plus years in film and TV.  First making Black (and TV) history in 1969, when she became the first Black person to host a network variety show (The Leslie Uggams Show) since Nat King Cole’s show in the mid-1950s, Uggams later became a trailblazer and household name with Roots, the 1977 TV mini-series adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel––a series that still holds viewership records almost 50 years later. In the decades since, the now 80-year-old legend has hardly slowed down, appearing in dozens more movies and shows, among them the Deadpool movies (where she plays the foul-mouth Blind Al) and Empire, where she won raves for playing Lucious Lyon’s (Terrence Howard) unpredictably bipolar Leah Walker. American Fiction has her again playing a mom saddled with mental health issues––dementia this time––and Uggams says it was the family story in the buzzed-about American Fiction that drew her to the part. 

“When I got sent the script, I fell in love with it,” she tells Bet.com. “I couldn't believe how fabulous it was. And then when they said Jeffrey Wright was doing it, I said I'm definitely in.” Though the central dilemma in the story comes from Monk’s ridiculous plan to make money off a comically insulting book invoking Black trauma and tropes, the story's heart is its family tale. While Monk is frustrated with the industry that only wants a one-dimensional portrayal of Blackness, he writes the book for the money since  Agnes’ condition is worsening. Uggams says that, as with Leah in Empire, she worked hard to root the condition in compassion and truth. “Now we're hearing about more and more people having Alzheimer's disease, so it's all around us and as people get older, things like that start to happen,” says Uggams, who reveals she recently lost a friend to Alzheimers. “The fact that you've been the caretaker and now your children have to reverse the role where they have to become the caretaker, it’s something that I wanted to absolutely address.” 

Playing Agnes marks another milestone in representation for Uggams, who has played characters that have telegraphed visibility for countless others for generations. Her variety show in 1969, playing the young enslaved girl Kizzy in Roots (which earned her Golden Globe and Emmy nominations), playing a friend to the unwitting medical research pioneer Henrietta Lacks in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks––Uggams has spent nearly all her life on screen or stage, providing an example of Black excellence long before she had as many contemporaries as today’s performers do. “There were only a few of us then. Even in a commercial, the only person you saw was Aunt Jemima. So, like, when I was on Sing Along with Mitchin the 1960s) it became an event. People would gather around the TV. ‘She’s on!’ I was somebody they could relate to. We’re well past that now, but there’s still not enough of us.” 

Times have indeed changed, and along with them, the values, expectations, and approaches artists like herself use. Today, many Black entertainers say they see their work as a type of activism––that their stories and representation help make change. Of course, Uggams came up when activism looked much different and involved sit-ins and the risk of arrest, but she sees the present form as part of the same continuum. “You had to learn everything to fight for everything,” she says. “You had to stay in situations workwise that it not be exactly what you want it to be. We didn't quit so easily even though there were times you think, ‘Oh God, this is not what I want to be but I'm gonna hang in here.’  Of course then we didn't have the iPhone, right? Everybody's into the iPhone and stuff like that. They’re using that to make noise, and that's the difference.” 

She’s just as inspired by the younger generation as they are of her…even if she couldn’t have dreamed, she’d still be thrilling audiences on screen all these years later. Indeed, she’s so booked and busy she might not even see the Oscars; she’s opening a performance of Jelly’s Last Jam in New York, her hometown, on Feb. 21, followed by a one-woman show but says she’ll watch if she’s free. (Iconic!) “It’s been wonderful,” she says of her amazing career. “Certainly women have come a long way. Most of the time they consider you washed up at age 40, so the fact that here I am, I just turned 80 -- I’m still going like that (Energizer] bunny.” 

American Fiction is in theaters now.