Kristen Stewart will make her television series debut as astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger.
The 34-year-old actress, who attacked Hollywood for what she called “false” support for female directors, will take on the role of Ride, the first American woman to travel to space, according to Deadline.
Ride, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, joined NASA in 1978 as part of a diverse class of astronauts, including the first black and Asian-American astronauts and a married couple.
The Los Angeles native flew her first space shuttle mission in 1983 aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Three years later, Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff on a cold morning at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 28, 1986.
Kristen Stewart will make her TV series debut as astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger (pictured in New York in March)
Ride became the first American woman to travel to space in 1983.
The diverse team included Ride’s classmates Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka, along with Michael J. Smith, Gregory Jarvis, Francis R. ‘Dick’ Scobee and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
Ride was the only astronaut to serve on the Rogers Commission.
The plot of the series not only looks at the groundbreaking class of 1978, but also the investigation of the 1986 Challenger tragedy.
The show is based on the book The New Guys, by Meredith E Bagby.
Bagby, along with Kyra Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler, created their company, Big Swing Productions, to create the series.
In an interview with Deadline, Sedgewick said he had been working on the project for years.
“This is something we’ve been working on at Big Swing since 2017, Meredith, Valerie and I, about this new class of astronauts recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,” he told the outlet.
Part of the series will focus on the 1986 Challenger disaster that claimed the lives of schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis R. ‘Dick’ Scobee Ronald McNair, Michael J. Smith and Ellison Onizuka.
“Sally Ride was among them, and the focus is on this wild, wild group of newly recruited astronauts, all very diverse,” the Emmy winner explained.
“And then, in an Oppenheimer clue, it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster that Ride was involved in.”
Bagby, who was obsessed with space and the shuttle program during her childhood in Florida, saw the Challenger explode that fateful day.
“Meredith received hundreds of hours of interviews with members of that class, and we have relationships with all of those living astronauts and they will be part of our think tank on the program,” he said.
The Closer star revealed that it was Stadler’s “dream to have Kristen Stewart” in the role of Ride.
“After over a year of trying to get Kristen this book through reverse channeling, she read it and fell in love,” Sedgwick said.
Kyra Sedgwick developed the series for years with The New Guys author Meredith E Bagby and writer-producer Valerie Stadler through their Big Swing production company (pictured in New York in May).
Stewart, who has been open about her sexuality since publicly coming out as a lesbian when hosting Saturday Night Live in 2017, may have to perform in secret.
Ride was also gay, making her the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to travel in space, but her sexuality was never publicly acknowledged until after her death.
The obituary written by Ride and his former partner Tam O’Shaughnessy and published by Sally Ride Science referred to O’Shaughnessy as Ride’s “partner of 27 years.”
Sedgwick, who produces the series with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Stewart’s Nevermind production banner, hopes to have the show ready in time to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy.