by Bryan & Heather
While we didn’t plan it this way, June 2025 turned out to be ‘80s Space Program Month for us. We began with Netflix’s intriguing recent documentary on the 1986 Challenger disaster, and as luck would have it, only a few days later Heather caught wind of a new documentary on the life of Sally Ride coming to Hulu for Pride Month.Neither of us have ever dived particularly deep into the history of the US space program, but on the heels of Ride’s pivotal role in the inquiry into NASA’s conduct with Challenger and learning that this first American woman in space had chosen to keep large parts of her life secret, we couldn’t not check it out.
Director Cristina Constantini’s Sally opens, as so many documentaries do, with an interview. This particular interview, however, is pivotal for what follows in ways that are far from ordinary. 73-year old Tam O’Shaughnessy introduces herself almost immediately as the life partner of famed astronaut Sally Ride for twenty-seven years. The narrative that ensues tells the story of Ride’s life not so much from the perspective of a female pioneer, though that certainly provides the subject matter for the first half of the film, broadly speaking, but from the perspective of a high-achieving woman of the 1970s and ‘80s who was afraid to reveal her true self to the world for fear of losing any opportunity for achievement she might otherwise have had. Ride may have died from pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of 61, but Sally still found a way to include its subject’s voice, as well: most of the material covering her application to Nasa, astronaut training, spaceflight, and role on the board investigating the Challenger disaster is pieced together from old footage and re-edited segments of past interviews, documentaries, and specials. New material centers around interviews with not only O’Shaughnessy but other members of Ride’s family, coworkers, and ex-husband Steve Hawley. These figures paint a more human picture of Sally, from her discomfort and annoyance at being asked inappropriate questions on press tours (which take on even more meaning in light of her sexuality), independent and erratic behavior during her short-lived marriage, and even her reaction to prominent cases of homophobia that affected people she knew personally and all but certainly pushed her further and further into the closet while she still lived.
It must be said, however, that as a result of this different narrative focus Sally cannot serve as a comprehensive guide to Sally Ride’s life. There are gaps, both glaring and more subtle, where certain information is only hinted at or even ignored entirely. Some of this may be due to Ride herself not being able to play an active role in the film; her motivation for marrying Steve in the first place, for instance, is left largely to the audience’s speculation. Other topics, like what Ride did for NASA after that first flight other than the Challenger investigation, seem to have been left out for space and clarity as O’Shaughnessy’s own story picks up steam and the two childhood friends, scientists, and eventually lovers move deeper into each other’s orbits and ultimately end up living and even founding their own outreach organization together—which compelled them to keep their relationship secret even moreso.
As an attempt to complicate, humanize, and reveal more fully a notable figure in the last five decades of American history, then, Sally mostly succeeds. It is an engaging, sometimes funny, poignant work that, while it may not be the last word on its subject, is still a necessary one. Above all, Constantini and O’Shaughnessy provide a perfect example of how LGBT individuals have always existed, but have been forced to keep their identities secret until shamefully recently. Releasing Sally on streaming in the middle of Pride Month was the perfect move, and we definitely recommend it to anyone interested in our recent history.