Taraji P. Henson is best known for playing the ballsy, brassy, broom-wielding diva-best-believa Cookie Lyon on Empire, but lest we forget, mother is an Oscar-nominated actress and there's more than one trick to this pony.
Playing against type, Taraji stars alongside Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Janelle "So Glad She's Acting" Monae as three real-life African-American female scientists at NASA whose genius helped propel John Glenn into space as the first American to orbit the Earth.
Katherine G. Johnson (who is still kicking at 97) is a brilliant physicist, space scientist, and mathematician known for working on Glenn's historic mission as well as calculating the trajectory for Project Mercury and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015--no big deal, right?
Well, if you've never heard of her, that's about to change. Directed by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) Hidden Figures tells the "untold story" of Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) as they "crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations" and bolster a nation--then lagging behind Russia in the Space Race--that still treated them as second-class citizens.
Check out the trailer for Hidden Figures, hitting theaters January 13 (though I hope for a pre-Christmas limited release in time for awards season), below:
