Felicity Jones is an Academy Award-nominated actress who garnered international acclaim for her performance as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything. She won the 2016 BAFTA Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year. Jones also played an integral role in destroying the first Death Star.

Nicole Stott has logged over 103 days in space and was also a member of the six-person crew for NEEMO 9 — NASA’s program that trains astronauts for future space missions in the Aquarius underwater laboratory. She’s also one of the leaders behind the Space for Art Foundation, an initiative that uses space-inspired art in therapeutic healing.

Jones stars in George Clooney’s upcoming Netflix film, The Midnight Sky, as Sully Rembshire, an astronaut working aboard the spaceship Aether. Stott was of course a real-life NASA astronaut, serving as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station during Expeditions 20 and 21, as well as a mission specialist aboard Space Shuttle missions STS-128 and STS-133.

Jones and Stott are equally impressed by each other’s career. There’s a mutual curiosity between the two, and in preparation for The Midnight Sky’s December 23rd release, Supercluster connected Jones and Stott for this exclusive conversation as part of our new, ongoing series: Real Astronaut, Play Astronaut.

Interview edited for clarity

Hi Felicity — I’m Nicole — I’m an artist and a retired NASA astronaut who’s had the opportunity to fly in space twice on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. I’ve spent a little over three months in space.

Hi Nicole — I’m Felicity — and I’m portraying Sully, an astronaut, in George Clooney’s new film on Netflix, The Midnight Sky. I’m also a huge space fan and intrigued to be talking to you today.

As you can imagine, I’m also a space fan. And I’m equally if not more excited to be speaking here with you.

Phenomenally exciting to chat, and find out more about your experiences as an astronaut. Initially, I was very curious to find out what led you to space — was it something you always wanted to do?

Well, I think it took me quite a while to discover that “astronaut” could even be a possibility. I grew up loving flying. My dad liked to build and fly small airplanes, so I got that passion in my blood, I think. After studying how airplanes fly at school, I was like, ‘why would you not want to know how rocket ships fly?’ And then this path of being a NASA engineer lead to seeing astronauts. I was helping get space shuttles ready to fly, and I would see astronauts come through and I realized that 80% of what they were doing was a lot like what I was doing as an engineer — and it might not be true that only special people get to do this.

Was there anything, in particular, that sort of gave you a feeling that it was possible?

Certainly, as a child growing up, Star Trek was really getting going when I was a kid. That was on TV everyday after I got home from school. It was a really cool vision of what a positive future could be like, too. That’s what I think about when I think about astronauts. Our job is to make life better here on Earth.

I’ll tell you, I’m envious of the opportunity you’ve had to play an astronaut, to perform that way and be immersed in this environment of space. And your spaceship, quite honestly, is awesome. We need that! People always ask me what the most interesting thing about being an astronaut is. There’s a lot of answers. My question to you is — what was the most interesting thing you learned about being an astronaut, researching your role for Sully?

It’s interesting you say that about the ship, because I was fascinated by the sort of architectural space of being on a ship and how that worked. I watched numerous documentaries of people literally sleeping in tethered sleeping bags — vertical. I couldn’t quite believe that. So when I went onto the set, I was pleasantly surprised that we had quite nice cabins. I was fascinated by the living conditions. Also, the food. I mean, you probably get asked about what astronauts eat all the time. I don’t know what it is about the fascination with sort of living off powdered spaghetti bolognese! I guess that ability to live without too much comfort — that’s what intrigued me. You know, I’m sitting here in my fluffy slippers, I’m a bit of a comfort bunny. I definitely have such respect for you guys for being able to endure such difficult conditions for such long periods of time.

The universe might be indifferent towards life on Earth, but we humans have a primal affinity for the cosmos. That natural curiosity powering our impulse to explore is an essential part of scientific discovery. To Stott, Sully’s motivations in The Midnight Sky are of particular interest.

From a character standpoint, what would you say your character’s personal reason was for going to space? We have them as astronauts — why we’re working for NASA or the other space agencies. In the context of this film, what do you think your character’s motivation was?

In terms of Sully’s backstory, there’s a lot about the pursuit of escape. I think she has quite a complex relationship with Earth and with certain people on Earth, and I think, by going into space, it’s where she feels she can most be herself. I think some of her idiosyncrasies on Earth aren’t really accepted or understood. Suddenly, in space, she feels enormous freedom. There’s a peaceful quality that comes out of her in space… She finds it very meditative.

I’ll just say, having the pleasure of viewing the film, there is a very meditative sense to it.

Clooney has previously called The Midnight Sky a meditation on what could be the near future. Climate change developments in the past two years gave the director, actor, and producer a feeling of immediacy. While Clooney had the option of turning the film into a CGI-infused blockbuster, his directorial take is notably understated. There’s a feeling of impenetrable loneliness throughout The Midnight Sky. It’s a slow burn reflecting on what might become of Earth as we know it.

The Midnight Sky blends fiction and reality in more ways than just its subject matter. The process of producing a Hollywood blockbuster is a lot like training a new group of astronauts. They both require a lot of preparation. Building the right environment can spark the imagination, and prepare a person for what’s ahead. While the conditions of outer space are somewhat replicable, it’s difficult for astronauts to know exactly what it’s like until they’re already in the thick of it. In that way, training is a lot like acting. There’s a reason both astronauts and actors have a “dress rehearsal” before the real thing.

Having been in real spaceships, a lot of our training is done in simulators - which are a lot like sets, I’d imagine. We go into them, we’re trying to imagine the reality of what it will be like in space when we’re floating and doing some of the different things that only space brings with it.

For Jones, a strong sense of imagination helped her bring a playful grace to Sully. It’s a gracefulness that Stott noticed right away.

There’s something almost dance-like or musical in the way Sully works. Grace is exactly the right word, the right emotion that I wanted her to have — that there was harmony. My analogy was that she was a DJ. She was listening to sounds, that she was a connoisseur of sounds and manipulating sounds. It’s interesting that you say the word grace. That’s something that was very much in my mind in portraying her.

I’ll tell you, it really came through. You know, we’re all critics as we watch somebody doing what we do professionally. It just seemed so beautifully natural, the way that you moved in the microgravity part — when you were able to just float and fly. I love the way that comes across now in films. I just felt myself kind of moving through the ship with you.

Despite being an ocean and time zone away, Jones and Stott are on the same page every step of the way. When the actress and astronaut speak, it’s clear that they share a mutual understanding: that science and art must work together to advance human discovery.