Obviously the openly gay Kristen Stewart was motivated to play closeted astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger, a locked-down Amazon miniseries, because of their shared LGBTQ experience and perspective. Does Variety’s Joe Otterson allude to this aspect? Of course not. Ride was a heroic figure during the official investigation of the January 1986 Challenger disaster as she covertly slipped info about the O-rings being the principal cause. Ride’s long-term relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy was finally revealed after Ride’s death in 2012.
