[austincheney]

Octavia Spenser plays Dorothy Vaughan, the programmer. Katherine Johnson was played by Taraji Henson.

The movie deliberately side steps history in order to tell a story. For example the accomplishments of the three primary characters occurred during unrelated timelines. The three primary characters likely knew each other in passing but in addition to the different timelines they worked in unrelated departments on unrelated projects. Also Katherine Johnson took 3 days to confirm John Glenn’s landing coordinates within the week of launch. The movie reduced that to an hour effort holding up launch for dramatic effect. John Glenn really did ask for Johnson to personally verify the numbers though.

There are three supporting characters that are real life figures: Al Harrison played by Kevin Costner, Jim Johnson played by Mahershala Ali, and Olke Krupa who played a fictionalized version of a real engineer mostly accurately depicted as Mary Jackson’s real life supervisor. The rest of the supporting cast were largely stereotype figures.

Considering the historical reality I did not take the white characters as white saviors at all.