Prime Video’s The Challenger has added six recurring actors: William Fichtner, Kevin Carroll, Eric Lange, Adelaide Clemens, Louisa Jacobson and Hunter Burke. Kristen Stewart stars as Sally Ride in the limited series about the 1986 disaster and its aftermath.
Fichtner plays Nobel physicist Richard Feynman, Carroll plays physicist Arthur Walker, Lange plays General Donald Kutyna, Clemens plays astronaut Rhea Seddon, Jacobson plays Tam O’Shaughnessy, and Burke plays astronaut Steve Hawley. Kutyna served on the presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident; O’Shaughnessy was Ride’s life partner.
The series covers events leading up to and following the Jan. 28, 1986 shuttle explosion, which killed all seven people aboard, the subsequent investigation and Ride’s journey to becoming the first American woman in space. It adapts Meredith E. Bagby’s 2023 book The New Guys; Maggie Cohn created the series and serves as showrunner.
