Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer, a resident film and television auntie of the community, has just been announced as a new addition to the cast of Hidden FiguresThe film is an adaptation of the book, with the same name, written by Margot Lee Shetterly about the group of Black women that helped America win the space race against competing nations in 1962. With her co-star Golden Globe winner Taraji P Henson, Octavia Butler will play Dorothy Vaughan, a mathematician on the team that helped astronaut John Glenn orbit the earth aboard the Friendship 7.

Photo: Gihpy
Photo: Gihpy

Before working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Dorothy Vaughan was a math teacher in Virginia, at R.R. Morton High School. During her time at the NACA, she was the leader of the West Area Computers, an all Black, all woman, team of mathematicians. Katherine Johnson, Taraji’s character, was one of the women that joined the group after Vaughan was appointed in 1949.

Together, along with another colleague Mary Jackson, these women made history for their country. This film, developed by Fox 2000, is projected to be in theaters January 13th, 2017. Spencer has been busy, reprising her role in the The Divergent Series, playing God in a Christian movie The Shack coming out November this year, and she’s just finished filming for a movie co-starring Chris Evans, Gifted.

Photo: Giphy
Photo: Giphy

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