It was only a matter of time before David Oyelowo played an astronaut. The British-American actor and producer has lived a regimented life since his formative years in Lagos, Nigeria, where he attended a military-style boarding school. His career founded in classical training has given Oyelowo a calculated rigor to all of his work, including critically and commercially acclaimed roles in Selma and The Butler. Though a small role in Interstellar gave the actor a small sliver of space science fiction, Oyelowo is poised to stake a claim as a leading man in the genre. The Golden Globe and Emmy-nominated actor stars in George Clooney’s new film on Netflix, The Midnight Sky, as Tom Adewole - the commander of the Aether spacecraft.

Alvin Drew is likewise no stranger to structure and order. As a real-life astronaut, that’s all part of the job. Prior to being selected for NASA’s astronaut class of 2000, Drew was a US Air Force Command Pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flying time and experience flying over 30 different aircraft. During his career as an astronaut, Drew has flown in space twice on STS-118 and STS-133, both times working as a mission specialist. Alongside fellow astronaut Nicole Stott––who we’ve paired up with Oyelowo’s The Midnight Sky co-star Felicity Jones––was part of the crew for Space Shuttle Discovery’s final flight and the last African-American to fly aboard any NASA Space Shuttle.

Despite being born an ocean apart, Oyelowo and Drew have developed a similar approach to life: work hard and get the job done. Supercluster linked up the actor and astronaut for an exclusive conversation about The Midnight Sky, what it takes to be a real life and onscreen astronaut, and how art might be a window into the near future. The film takes place in 2043 - only 23 years ahead from the present day. A lot can happen in a little more than two decades. We might be sending crews to our outer solar system, or there might be an Earth-shattering apocalypse. Both happen in The Midnight Sky. Clooney’s film shows a world in which long-duration space travel and an inhospitable Earth are both realities. According to Drew, the technology shown isn’t too far from the truth.

One of the things I noticed in The Midnight Sky was the size of that spacecraft. It’s about 500 to 1,000 tons. You’d think that’s a bit extravagant for five people on a journey, but it turns out that it’s about right. We think that a vehicle that would go to Mars would be the size of the International Space Station - as big and extravagant as that may seem when compared to an Apollo capsule. [Aether] had this huge green space. We’ve got this big windowed area with all kinds of lush vegetation out there. Those things you would need if you’re going to be stuck in a tin can like that for two years round trip. When Oyelowo speaks, it’s always with purpose. The questions he lobs to Drew are laser-sharp in their specificity.

What are maybe some of the surprising things that you think one would really miss from being away from Earth for that amount of time?

The thing I missed right away was the sense of day and night. We have roughly 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. Once you leave Earth’s shadow, the Sun is shining all the time. There is no nighttime.  Oyelowo dives into topics with Drew that aren’t often discussed within the space community, including sex and procreation in space. His character and Jones’ character in the film are expecting a child together. Assuming this isn’t a sci-fi universe where immaculate conception is a thing, that means they had to have conceived while they were on Aether. While this isn’t necessarily against NASA protocol (since there are plenty of NASA astronaut couples out there), it definitely would be against practical recommendations. As Drew describes, fetus cells are guided by gravity to form and multiply in the right place. So, a pregnancy in space might prove to be more physiologically complicated than socially unacceptable. Oyelowo also touches on the other end of the spectrum of consciousness - death.

What’s the relationship therefore to death? There are dangerous professions, but there are so many variables that could lead to a mishap with a spacecraft. Do you see a commonality in the way astronauts approach death as a reality?

I know that from my community, the folks who are military aviators, who are test pilots, you saw it first hand. Nobody who got into the astronaut corps did not witness one of their squadron mates die in a mishap somewhere. And so, it was ever-present. The scariest part for me at least wasn’t that I might get killed. If you’ve got a family that depends on you for income and emotional support and just being a part of that family and suddenly you’re gone, what happens after that? That was a far more terrifying thing. Drew has persevered in the face of death. As a pilot, he’s decorated with ten medals from the US Armed Forces. As a technician, Drew accomplished essential work in ISS construction and was the 200th person to walk in space. Drew was also the most recent Black NASA astronaut in space until Victor Glover embarked on Crew-1 in November. The Shuttle Program’s last two missions, STS-134 and STS-135, both had entirely white crews. Though Oyelowo is not the sole Black astronaut aboard the Aether (Amazon Prime’s Hunters star Tiffany Boone gives an urgent performance as Mission Specialist Maya Peters), he’s intimately familiar with the importance of representation.

One of the things I’ve had people asking me is, “Gosh, we don’t see many Black astronauts.” I mean, we see some, and it’s wonderful that you exist. But are there inherent challenges being a person of color when it comes to space travel?

One of the big things is, like you said, you just don’t see other people of color. The folks we’ve had in our astronaut corps with us - they’re all open-minded, they’re all fine people - but they come from a different culture, they come from a different background, and sometimes you just feel like you’re a bit isolated. And it probably comes from the fact that the estuaries that flow into the astronaut corps aren’t very well-stocked with people of color. They’re coming out of flight surgeons, test pilots, research scientists, lab scientists - those STEM career fields aren’t well-populated. To date, only 18 out of NASA’s 339 astronauts candidates have been Black. That’s a lack of presence that Drew is determined to fix.

One of the things I’m working on is called the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, where we try to give opportunities to exceptional Black undergraduate students to work in some of these career fields and inspire those folks to go into those career fields. And also to get a sense of that normalcy so when you’re a company and somebody of color is interviewing with you, you’ve worked with them, you’ve interviewed them, and you have a sense of how they might be culturally different. The body language is not going to be the same. That doesn’t mean that they’re communicating what you think they are. Or they have a different perspective, and that’s a good thing. We want to have multi-point perspectives on solving some of our problems.

I couldn’t agree more… Whether we like it or not, so many people, their first interaction with astronauts or space will be watching a movie. And that’s probably where the ambition comes from. So, it’s not lost on me that even the representation that myself, Tiffany Boone, Demian Bichir in this film - showing people from a different demographic doing this is of course incredibly important. And so, I celebrate you, and I’m so glad you’re doing that because to have a future where this thing opens up a bit more is a fantastic thing.

More people will know your name than mine! I think it was no coincidence that when NASA was first going to recruit Black astronauts back in the seventies, they turned to Nichelle Nichols, who was Lieutenant Uhura aboard the Starship Enterprise - who broke the color barriers. The effects that the small and silver screen have on the world around us are many layered. Dr. Mae Jemison was inspired to pursue a career in space after watching Nichols on TV. Jemison would later guest star with Nichols on Star Trek: The Next Generation in the series’ 150th episode, “Second Chances.” Nichols’ influence spanned far beyond just the space industry. Her famous encounter with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at an NAACP conference both convinced Nichols to remain in Gene Roddenberry’s then-new series and revealed that Lt. Uhura had a greater part to play than just a bridge officer on the Enterprise. In a 2011 interview with NPR, Nichols reflected on the chance encounter. “I looked across the way and there was the face of Dr. Martin Luther King smiling at me and walking toward me. By the time he reached me, he said, yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan. I am that Trekkie.” “I thanked him, and I think I said something like, Dr. King, I wish I could be out there marching with you. He said, no, no, no. No, you don’t understand. We don’t need you on the - to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for.” Today, Oyelowo and Drew carry on that tradition of inspiration. For Drew, though, another televised event prompted him to pursue a career amongst the stars.

I remember watching the crew of Apollo 11 on the Moon, and I asked my dad… How many jobs would I need to have to make enough money to go do what those guys are doing? And he said, “No, there’s a job called being an astronaut where they pay you to do that.” And I said sign me up for that particular piece. Now, this was maybe three and a half years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, and discrimination didn’t just evaporate overnight in America just because they signed that act. And so, for some reason, in my five-and-a-half year old brain, I turned to him and I said, “Can Black people even become astronauts?” And he told me the story of the Air Force who had hired an astronaut. He had been killed in a training accident before he could fly in space, but the fact is, it was there. It was a possibility. There were no barriers aside from my own ambition and my own accomplishments to becoming an astronaut. And I just took off from there. I just kept going. The Midnight Sky is available for streaming on Netflix on December 23rd.