Plenty. In National Geographic’s new drama series, The Right Stuff, available on Disney+ beginning October 9, we learn who the astronauts were ... and we learn about the women who kept them bound to Earth. In what the producers hope is the first season of an ongoing series, viewers come to know the wives, especially Annie Glenn, Trudy Cooper and Louise Shepard.
“These men would not be who they were without the women,” said Jennifer Davisson, executive producer and president of production, Appian Way Productions. (Appian Way, founded by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Warner Horizon Scripted Television produced the series.) “That sounds antiquated, but I don’t mean it that way. They truly challenged these men. One of the things we talked about a lot in beginning stages is you had America at the time.” Indeed, America at the time had husbands set the pace and wives follow.
A human has not yet been created with more sheer swagger than a fighter pilot turned astronaut. For a woman to partner with that sort of man, she, too, must be made of the right stuff.
Eloise Mumford (Fifty Shades of Grey) portrays Trudy Cooper as a study in feminism, albeit one shrouded in the realization that her dreams would forever be dashed. A fearless pilot, she has left her husband, Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, when the series opens because of his infidelities. But “Gordo” wouldn’t be accepted into the nascent NASA program unless he was happily wed, so Trudy relents and gives the marriage another try.