Celebrity Update Angela Bassett is joining the cast of director Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern, which is currently shooting in New Orleans. Bassett is playing Dr. Amanda Waller, a government agent who in comics lore became charged with overseeing the Suicide Squad, a government-run group of captured supervillains performing tasks in exchange for eventual freedom. It’s unclear if that group will pop up in “Lantern.”

The movie recently began filming in New Orleans with a cast led by Ryan Reynolds and including Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Tim Robbins.

Bassett recently starred in TV’s “ER” and was seen on the big screen in the Notorious B.I.G. biopic, “Notorious.” She is planning to make her feature directorial debut with “United States,” an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure,” which concerns a black literary figure who writes a faux autobiography that becomes a sensation.