“This movie was a gift,” Pharrell Williams says. “It continues to be a gift. It’s like the rarest thing you ever heard.”
The Grammy winning singer, songwriter and producer is sitting in a chic music studio in Hollywood. He’s taken time out of his busy schedule (he won’t answer if and when a new album is coming) to chat about “Hidden Figures,” his production company’s and his own first official movie producing credit. It’s a somewhat awkward discussion. Williams is focused on the film, but there are two publicists sitting in the room with us. A very rare occurrence for a sit down movie interview, but, it’s Pharrell and we’re just gonna assume this is standard fare on the music side of the biz even if we’ve interviewed some of the biggest pop stars in the world and never had this… circumstance.
Williams’ passion about the Theodore Melfi-directed drama is clearly evident, however. The picture tells he true story of three African-American women who made historical strides at NASA during Project Mercury, America’s mission to blast an astronaut into space and to circle the globe. Even with a media known to overlook the achievements of women and most certainly African-American women, the achievements of these pioneers, Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), were still somehow below the radar.
He notes, “You went to school and you may have not known this story, but you’ve seen African-American women who were really good at science. Who were really smart and kind of knew more than you. You’ve seen female black engineers before. You’ve seen black female savants before. You just haven’t seen them on the screen before. That’s why this is a gift.”
The project was brought to Williams attention by his producing partner Mimi Valdez who had met with Oscar winning producer Donna Gigliotti (“Shakespeare in Love”) and learned about the “Hidden Figures” novel Margot Lee Shetterly was still actively working on. In fact, Shetterly was only 55 pages into writing it, but everyone involved realized his was a story that needed to be brought to the screen. Valdez also knew it would pique Williams’ interest because it centered on African-American women and NASA.
“These weren’t three women going out for the weekend on a girl’s trip. This wasn’t like one African American woman who is the best friend and it’s the story of the other friend,” Williams says. They were scientists, they were engineers, they were mathematicians and they were technologically advanced. That is something we know. We’ve met some of them, but we’ve never seen it on the screen before. It also involved NASA and Space, two subjects I was obsessed with since I was a child. I would be like six-years-old staring into stars seeing how far they’d go. I didn’t want to fly, but I was obsessed with space. I would ask my mom, ‘Where does it end?’ And she couldn’t answer those questions.”
The story also had two other personal connections to Williams. The first was that it took place in Hampton, Virginia, essentially the same Norfolk area he grew up in. The second was that he’d actually met the sole surviving member of the trio, Johnson, years before.
“She came to an event we had for our organization we have called From One Hand To Another. It teaches kids, tutors them, is an after school program, summer camp and has a lot to do with STEM,” Williams says. “We partner with NASA as well and African-American astronaut that I invited, Leland Melvin, brought her. I met her, but didn’t know the extent of her story. Six years later I’m telling my mom about this producing gig I got with the film and I tell her all about it and she’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, you met her.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ My mom knew who she was through meeting her the day, but she didn’t know her story. No one really knew Katherine’s story. All three of their stories, by the way, their stories suffered because of circumstance and error. You just didn’t highlight what women did in those days and, believe it or not, that still goes on today.”
There are a total of eight original songs in “Hidden Figures,” but only two were written specifically for the film, “Runnin’” and “I See A Victory.” Williams admits he was Melfi’s “biggest headache” because, as he recalls, “I was trying to shove a song everywhere. ‘Maybe we put a song here. Maybe we put a song there.’ But I pushed him and he was very patient with me.”
“I See A Victory” may be the more memorable of the two Original Song contenders, but “Runnin’” plays in the context of the film itself and may have the better shot at getting nominated. And Williams’ thoughts on the inspiration for that track clearly reflect how much it means to him.
“When you think about the 1960’s you’d think, ‘O.K., good music. Segregation.’ but you’re probably not thinking about what its like to be African-American and female,” Williams says. “[Johnson] lived in a 1960s matrix where the gravity was already very heavy for African-Americans. So, the physics for an African-American in the 1960s was much more heavy for black people. But for black women it was twice as hard because there was gender bias. So, you think about being a black man, having to use the bathroom on one side of the campus you can’t go down the hall. As advanced as NASA is they still had segregating too. So you would have to go all the way across the campus to use the bathroom as an African-American male. And, because NASA is smart they had campus bikes. But as a woman you did not wear pants. You did not wear shorts, because remember its’ the 1960s. So, Katherine had to run. And that’s where the song ‘Runnin’’ comes from. My question was, ‘Living in that kind of matrix. The gravity of being black. The gravity of being a female. How did the math still come out? And how does your mind work? Your math penetrated walls of gender bias, walls of racism. It got you in. So, how does your mind work as you have to make a 30-40 minute roundtrip every day just to use the bathroom?’ So, that’s where ‘Runnin’’ comes from.”
As for the other song, “Victory,” which is sung by the legendary Kim Burrell, was more a case of Williams realizing the film needed an uplifting feeling. He recalls, “‘It was one of those songs like, ‘Hey man, they are going through it. They are going through it. And we have to try and tell the story of how they saw beyond their situation. [Kevin Costner’s character] asked Katherine to see beyond the numbers so I had to see a song that saw beyond the situation.”
Before the election many would have seen the achievements of the women in “Hidden Figures” through the prism of the nation’s first female president. Instead, the battle for societal progress is made more evident today by the struggles Johnson, Vaughn, Jackson and many others fought against over 50 years ago. Williams, who publicly campaigned for Clinton, says he gets asked this question “all the time” but he doesn’t want to sound opportunistic even if it thematically they film may resonate even more than expected..
“I always thought he might win, always, because I never believed the polls. Polls are antiquated. It didn’t make sense. Polls are 100 people at a time. How that math work? And millennial don’t answer phones? So, what are we talking about? So, I always thought the math was always off,” Williams says. “But, compartmentally I was always excited about these amazing African-American women’s stories in engineering, math and science. So, we know they exist but we never see them on the screen so that was so exciting to me. And the fact this math that was done by hand if it had been off by one degree he may not have made it into orbit and he may have been lost in space forever. So, the idea that their minds is what helped bring that to life was everything to me. But then when the election happened it was like, ‘Whoa, yeah. It just highlights it even more.’”
“Hidden Figures” opens in limited release on Dec. 25. It expands nationwide on Jan. 6.