LOS ANGELES — Angela Bassett has plenty of reasons to celebrate the season, starting with “Black Nativity,” the holiday-themed musical that pairs her with Forest Whitaker.

In this reworking of the acclaimed Langston Hughes Christmas production, Bassett, 55, plays Aretha Cobbs, the wife of Whitaker’s Rev. Cobbs, a Harlem preacher long estranged from their only daughter (Jennifer Hudson). They’ve never met their grandson, now 16.

“I wasn’t familiar with the source material but I was a fan of Langston Hughes,” Bassett said.

“As a 15-year-old girl growing up in Florida, he was my favorite poet the day I discovered him.”

Bassett laughed. “On talent shows I would get some Langston Hughes poem and dress up and dramatize it.”

She had never seen Hughes’ “Black Nativity.” “So when I heard about this I was so excited. What appealed to me was the story that Kasi (Lemmons, the writer-director) conceived about family and reconciliation and forgiveness.”

As for her singing, Bassett flashed a quick smile.

“I knew music was a part of it, and maybe that’s the fear that goes, ‘I won’t think about that it’s a musical.’ We can talk about denial.”

Married (to actor Courtney B. Vance) and the mother of twins, she found it easy to relate to Aretha, especially “the loyalty she has to her husband. As a couple they have been tested by this trial, this trouble. The fissure is so deep they’ve had to support one another because it’s so painful.

“It’s a love and a loyalty. They’re trying to make the best.”

The Oscar-nominated veteran also scored this TV season with “American Horror Story: Coven.”

“It’s a good feeling with something that’s coming on week to week with people talking about it around the water cooler and really enjoying it.

“Everything was perfect about it. We film in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities, that’s a character itself.

“It’s dramatic and reminds me of being on the stage: I can be big as Marie Laveau. Her mystique is alive there today and you can still feel the influence this free woman of color had in the 1800s.”