When Taraji met ‘Hidden Figures’ heroine: ‘Talk about pressure!’

NEW YORK — Even though Taraji P. Henson is an award-winning actress and star of a hit TV series — Fox’s Chicago-made “Empire” — she was very nervous the first time she prepared to meet Katherine G. Johnson, the mathematician she was going to portray in “Hidden Figures.”

“Talk about pressure,” the actress said with a big laugh during a recent interview — joined by her co-stars Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae.

“You have to meet someone when you’re doing research for a role where you not only are going to play a real person, but someone who is still alive. Her family members are still alive. There’s a certain responsibility that comes with that — but oh, there’s also so much pressure! You don’t want to let them all down.”

“Hidden Figures” (opening Christmas Day at Kerasotes Showplace Icon) recounts the largely unknown story of the brilliant African-American women who were mathematicians and engineers working very much behind the scenes at NASA as America played catch-up with the Soviet Union in the space race of the 1960s.

Along with Henson portraying Johnson, Spencer plays Dorothy Vaughn and popular singer Monae follows up her feature film debut in “Moonlight” by playing Mary Jackson in “Hidden Figures.” All three women were key “human computers” indispensable to helping NASA overcome the obstacles to sending astronauts into space.

Those women not only had to overcome the prejudice of race, as it existed in 1961, but also their second-class status as women.

Spencer agreed and noted they — as actresses — “had to immerse ourselves in that time period. Contemporary women today have opportunities these women simply did not have. To know that these brilliant minds — these people who contributed so much to science, technology, engineering and math — had no voice and had no voice in the political process because they didn’t have the right to vote at that time made it all the more imperative that we make this movie.”

Monae expressed deep appreciation to established stars Spencer and Henson for “really being there for me” as she tackled her role and noted, “Now we are sisters. We really became family doing this movie. We hung out together, we laughed together. What you see on-screen is acting, yes, but it’s based on a real commitment to each other as friends and non-related sisters!

“We spent so much time together off the set. Taraji would cook for us all. We established a sisterhood. I hope every young girl — and older women as well, frankly, any person — can look at this sisterhood and be inspired by it. Realize that when we are united we can change the world.”

In the film, Kevin Costner plays the role of Al Harrison, the NASA Space Task Group Leader, charged with overseeing the team of scientists and mathematicians providing the technical support to the astronauts.

The Oscar winner said that he and co-star Jim Parsons, who joined him for the interview, both were attracted to the film for similar reasons.

“There was a historical, intellectual thing that caught us. The very first thing that caught my attention was the fact these women were referred to as ‘computers’ — long before we had those machines. The fact we identified the workers as computers. The more I read it, the script continued to charm. That seems like a light-weight term, but it leapt past that. Then we started thinking, ‘These people are real?’ We wanted to know more about them — and realized the entire world needed to know more about them.”

Parsons, who plays lead engineer Paul Stafford, smiled when it was noted he again is cast as a very smart scientist. But Stafford is far less appealing than his Sheldon Cooper on the hit CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

“I enjoy playing Sheldon so much,” he said, “but it was fun to play a guy who showcased some less attractive personal qualities.” While Stafford continually puts professional roadblocks in the way of Katherine Johnson’s advancement, Parsons stressed, “it was him revealing his insecurity about his job performance. There was this sense of pride. It wasn’t always sexism or racism on his part. He’s a product of his time — back in 1961 — and he buys into it.”

Costner agreed. “He is not playing a rampant racist. Anyone could have come in and played that. In his case there’s more human behavior going on,” noted Costner. For him, Stafford represented a guy who expressed “a level of insecurity that we’ve all experienced, and not just as a character in a movie.

“If anyone thinks they don’t have any insecurities, they’re not being honest with themselves. The Paul Stafford character had this thing that getting credit for his work was important. If you go beneath the skin, you realize he couldn’t have risen to the level he’s at a NASA without being an incredibly sharp person. My character [Harrison] may have wanted to reform Stafford’s thinking about accepting Katherine as an equal, but at the same time, he couldn’t afford to lose Paul Stafford. It was a tricky professional dance, given the attitudes that were so prevalent in 1961. That was especially true in Virginia, where this story is set.”

Parsons nodded. “You have to remember, Paul Stafford wasn’t the only guy who didn’t think a woman wasn’t supposed to be in that place or attending those high-security clearance meetings. It was the tenor of the times.”

Yet for the actor, it’s the more subtle aspects of prejudice that are important to observe while watching “Hidden Figures.” For example: “The way everyone looks at Taraji P. Henson’s Katherine as she comes into the room that has always only been populated by white men for the very first time. Then there’s the way she is given her own ‘colored’ coffeepot.

“Of course, the final indignity was the fact the colored-only women’s restroom is a 20-minute walk away for her. Yet, you have to realize it’s still what was an everyday thing for blacks back then — whether or not they were well-educated, truly brilliant scientists and mathematicians, who just happened to be women.”