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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Angela Bassett and Courtney Vance to this program. Both have enjoyed success in film and television and, this year, they celebrate their tenth year of marriage. I mentioned at the top that their family doubled in size one year ago at the birth of their twins. The new book is called "Friends: A Love Story." Angela and Courtney, nice to see both of you here.

Angela Bassett: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Tavis: There's so much packed into this book and let me just cover as much as I can in the twelve or fifteen minutes I have here. First of all, it is remarkable to me that two people from two different backgrounds end up finding a relationship that works. How did that happen?

Bassett: To you, to us too (laughter). To anybody any time that happens.

Tavis: I mean, your family backgrounds are so very different and we're told that, you know, two things. We're told that, one, opposites attract and I guess that's true sometimes. But people are always trying to find somebody they have something in common with, on the other hand. But your backgrounds couldn't be any different.

Bassett: Well, yeah, we do have some. I was, you know, a product of a single parent household growing up in the Projects in the south, public schooling. I'm trying to find all the things that are a little different about our backgrounds. You know, Courtney grew up with a mother and father, Detroit, private school, country day school.

But I think the importance of education was stressed in both households. In that, fortune deigned that our paths cross. He went on to Harvard; I went on to Yale, but then that acting bug. That's what we do have in common and that's what brought us together at Yale.

Courtney B. Vance: And as Angela mentioned, the educational aspect of both of our households was stressed very strongly, as was discipline. So, you know, there are certain things that we both had growing up in our different households that, when we actually got together, afforded us the opportunity for us to gel even more and more quickly.

Tavis: I'm not trying to start a fight here when you all get home (laughter).

Vance: Go ahead and jump in (laughter).

Tavis: If the education is that thing that you have in common and, to Angela's point, the acting is another thing that you have in common, do those disparate beginnings cause for challenges in making a relationship work? In other words, would you advise someone to get with someone if they knew that their backgrounds were different like yours? I mean, it worked with you. Would you advise that, though?

Bassett: Oh, yeah, sure. Why not? I mean, I advise someone to observe the person that they're interested in.

Tavis: That's important.

Bassett: Yes. Observe the character and, you know, the focus and the path that they're walking. That's what I observe. And we know that people who do great, great things in life sometimes come from very, very humble and poor beginnings. And we know people who are exposed to all the resources that money could buy and exposure and sometimes they sit and they do very little. You know, you have to observe the person because you never know what rose will grow up out of the concrete.

Vance: And the fact that we did that and we took our time finding each other, it took us longer to find each other. By the time we did find each other, we were ready to begin that process of trying to find the middle ground and find our way.

Tavis: We should jump on that just for a second. That's an amazing story in and of itself, how you two - to your point, Courtney - found each other. I mean, Black Hollywood ain't that big, after all, and you all were traveling in the same circles for years before you actually hooked up. How did you like move past each other that many times?

Vance: We were with other people. We were with other - I was in a long-term relationship.

Bassett: Oh, long, long, long, long, like eleven years, longer than we've been married (laughter). When someone in a relationship that long breaks up, you know they're going to get back together (laughter).

Vance: You know, it took us a while for things to actually settle out and, even when they did, you know, she was a good friend. How did that happen, you know? I was more nervous about asking a friend, "Do you like me?" than I was, you know, "Will you marry me?"

Bassett: You don't want to mess that up. You know, you don't want to mess up a real good friendship. I had done that in the past and, fortunately, with my friends, we were resilient enough to bounce back from that and to remain very good friends to this day. But there have been instances in relationships where they started as a friend and then you took that leap, that jump, and the chasm was too wide to come back to that friendship.

Tavis: I guess the flip side of it working or taking the risk to try to make it work, the flip side would be being afraid that it's not going to work because, if it were going to happen organically and you're in the same space for years and it never happens, was there any fear, any trepidation that it might not work because it was supposed to work? It wouldn't have taken us this many years to get together.

Bassett: Well, it was interesting. You know, like I say, he was in a relationship for a long time. Maybe I was in various different relationships. You know, I just never looked at him with those eyes. But then one day, he did something and I saw him in a different light and the attraction grew. It wasn't as if I had an attraction, but I didn't touch on it. We did go on one forgettable date.

Tavis: Forgettable (laughter).

Bassett: Yeah.

Vance: Which neither one of us can remember the date at all. That's how forgettable it was.

Bassett: Less than memorable date. Where? What? And then I was off to do a movie or two and life. But then I came around again and, in a moment, it was as if my eyes opened and I saw straight through past the physicality to his heart.

Vance: And I did the same thing with her. That's why we, within a week, were able to know that - I knew she was the one.

Tavis: You know, this is a strange story. You realize that. I mean, when you pass somebody that many times and then you go on a date that, to your word, is forgettable and then you end up being married ten years, the story don't make no sense, to be honest.

Bassett: It don't make no sense (laughter).

Tavis: It don't. It don't make no sense. It's like this is not supposed to be.

Bassett: But that's love. It don't make sense.

Tavis: I was just reading a stat today, literally just today. Fifty percent of marriages in the United States - I think most people know this. You hear it all the time. Half the marriages in the United States don't work today. In Black America, that number jumps up to sixty-nine percent. Fifty percent across the board of marriages end up in divorce. Sixty-nine percent in Black America.

I don't even want to know what the number is or how high the number goes when you're talking about Hollywood marriages. I raise that because you all are, you know, in that real, real high-risk category. You are married in America, you're Black and married in America and you're Black and married in America in Hollywood.

Vance: From the beginning because that's, I think, what took us so long. Once we took that time and we worked on ourselves and went through our lives, by the time I knew it was her, I was able to say as a man, "She's the one. I'm putting both feet in." Prior to that, I would have put one foot in.

But now I said this is different. I know in my heart. During all those thirteen years, what I knew about Angela was that she had a heart of gold. So when I actually looked at her for the first time, I said, "Oh, my goodness. She's got a heart of gold. I know that's her."

Once I made that leap, I then said to myself, "Okay, now I'm putting both feet in and I don't care about what the world says. It's you and me. Now you and me got to close the door and it's you and me and we've got to figure this out." That commitment that I made in my mind, everything else didn't matter to me. We knew, but that commitment that I made as a man in my mind because I think men have a hard time making that commitment in their minds to put two feet in and let's go forward.

Tavis: So let's set aside the numbers. But when these marriages oftentimes don't work, Angela, we hear certainly in Hollywood one of two things. Irreconcilable differences, whatever that means. I've still not figured that out yet. But either irreconcilable differences or people will honestly say that the pressures of a Hollywood marriage, careers, Angela on location here and Courtney on location there. I think people at least have to accept that. There's a certain level of pressure when you're apart that way that any relationship -

Bassett: - living in a fishbowl.

Tavis: Exactly.

Bassett: Courtney was away for about five years in New York.

Tavis: "Law and Order."

Bassett: I was in Los Angeles and truly he did have to come home, at the longest, every three weeks. He could only be gone maybe three weeks because, at two weeks, I'd go where I want to. If someone called, "Hey, you want to go do this? Oh, this came up," I didn't have to say, "Well, I'd like to go out with my girlfriend about 8:30. What do you think?"

You know, you settle back into almost a single sort of existence. Then when he comes home, it's like, "Oh, there you are." Now let's negotiate, let's talk about it. You know, there are other concerns and what you expect of the other person, how you speak to the other person.

Vance: But that number of that three weeks was talked about by Angela and I and we said no more than three weeks. I mean, then I can tell my producers on "Law and Order," "Hey, any chance you can schedule me so that I can jump back home?" Even if it's for a day or two, I just knew because we made the decision in our minds about our marriage is first, that I'm on the plane.

Bassett: You know, a woman can be home easy, but you men like to work, you like to go in the workplace and the more work, the better. I mean, this is a project coming up with individual here. It's like, whoa, slow down.

Tavis: Slow down, yeah.

Bassett: Women, we can relax and spa and luxuriate, you know, home and family and the hearth. We love to work too, but we love to, you know, replenish ourselves and talk to our mates.

Vance: I do think, though, that discussion about how the fishbowl of Hollywood and everything, we had to decide that we were going to do this thing. Based on that, five years, movies. When we got married, she was doing "Della" and the honeymoon was postponed until she finished with the movie. I mean, from the very beginning, we knew what we were about to get into, but despite that, we got to do something different for this to work.

Tavis: Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance. First of all, you're going to love just the cover on the book. This is a gorgeous photo. The cover is good, but more important, what's inside of it will empower you. It's called "Friends: A Love Story," of course, by Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance. Congratulations on the anniversary and on the babies. Nice to see you both.

Bassett: Thank you.