Making of ‘Hidden Figures’: How Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Pharrell Williams Revisited the ’60s to Tell an Untold Story of Space, Sexism and Civil Rights

That vision, which is prospering at the box office after first landing in select theaters on Dec. 25, is an early 1960s-set drama with an original score by Pharrell Williams that stars Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role). Set against the backdrop of that red, white and blue symbol of Kennedy-era optimism and ambition — the U.S. space program— it tells the tale of a trio of brilliant black women, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who performed mission-critical computations for the Gemini program but who still had to walk a half-mile to use the “colored only” bathrooms and endured other indignities of the Jim Crow South. Figures is the first Hollywood film to focus on — or even much acknowledge — the sin of segregation at the heart of the space race. Read More…