Premiering June 16 on National Geographic and streaming June 17 on Disney+ and Hulu is the powerful new documentary SALLY. Directed by Emmy Award-winner Cristina Costantini, the film explores the groundbreaking career and personal legacy of astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman to journey into space.
Beyond the headlines and heroism, SALLY offers a behind-the-scenes look at her long-hidden personal life, revealing her 27-year relationship with life partner Tam O’Shaughnessy. With exclusive interviews and never-before-seen archival footage, it shows you every side of Sally—even the ones she kept hidden for years.
We sat down with Tam O’Shaughnessy and Cristina Costantini to talk about love, legacy, and what it means to finally share the full story.
Innovation & Tech Today: Tam, why did you feel now was the right time to fully share your story—and also Sally’s story—with the world?
Tam O’Shaughnessy: I think the main thing was the team that wanted to do the documentary. I just have huge respect for National Geographic documentary films and the production company Story Syndicate. When I was approached about making this film, I liked the team. And when I met Cristina, I loved her vision for the film, and I liked her personally. It just seemed like the team was right. So it was wonderful. And I had been approached before about doing a TV mini-series or a movie, and I just had no interest in that.
What I was interested in was a truthful documentary film about Sally that would expand what people know about her personally and also include our relationship because it was an important relationship for both of us and it should be part of the historical record.
I&T Today: Absolutely. You mentioned Cristina’s vision, so I wanted to ask Cristina: Sally Ride was one of your childhood heroes. What did it mean to you personally to direct this film?
Cristina Costantini: It was a dream come true for me. It really was. Sally was big for me as a kid—and many women. I think just the symbolism of a woman going to space meant a lot to me as a kid. When I realized as an adult that her family was more complicated, that there was a part of herself, a beautiful part of herself, that she couldn’t share with the public, I thought—how sad is that? Every astronaut’s wife, since the beginning of time, stood next to them and had profiles written about them. The fact that Sally and Tam’s love was so ahead of its time in some way and not able to be celebrated while she was alive in the way that it deserved made me even more interested in the story.
And then when I met Tam, who is an incredible storyteller, an incredible person—she’s sick of hearing how incredible I think she is—but I knew that we had something really special. And oftentimes, as a documentary filmmaker, you have to do the convincing to the subject’s family members that this is going to be a nuanced portrait. And we might talk about some things that are not as flattering. But Tam kind of got that innately. I think she understood that Sally’s story was more powerful if people knew she was a real person rather than just a one-dimensional version of a hero. It’s been a real dream. The reception has been incredible, and I’m excited for her to be out in the world.
I&T Today: You hinted at how the story becomes more intricate. Sally Ride is known as a trailblazer for women in STEM, but this film shows how she made personal sacrifices, too. Tam, how do you personally hope people see both the hero that she was and the private person that the film showed her to be?
O’Shaughnessy: Good question. I hope that people who see the film understand that they are going to learn more about Sally, who she was, and what she cared about. Most people know her as the pioneering astronaut, but she was much more than that. She was an athlete and a science writer. We started a company with three of our friends. We knew nothing about business or finance. And we just sort of did it on our instincts and seat of our pants. And next year’s our 25th anniversary, and it’s amazing.
So I wanted people to learn more about Sally. And then also, because Sally and I chose to keep our relationship private from the public—our close friends and families knew, of course—although Sally never verbally said, talked to her family or her friends and said the words, “Tam is my partner,” or “I’m gay, I’m queer.” She just never uttered those words. But that was in keeping with Sally’s nature and the way she grew up.
I&T Today: Cristina—as a director, how did you strike that balance between Sally Ride the icon and Sally Ride the human being in her partnership with Tam?
Costantini: I think there were two stories, really. The film is two very different stories. One is the public Sally that we all knew and that was incredibly well documented. We brought in 5,000 reels of NASA archive and sound-synced them all. That was a huge task. We had an incredible team of archival producers, editors, and assistant editors who went through that mountain of footage with me.
And then there was this other story that I thought was so wonderful and so beautiful. That was Tam and Sally. Tam has such an incredible memory. And when we were sitting in our interview, and she was telling me these stories—Sally going up on her tiptoes, the candlelit steak dinner, or her lab that was a little cave—they were just such beautiful images, like vignettes that she was painting verbally.
And my brain just immediately went to—we have to create some kind of cinematic language to tell that story because they only had so many pictures together. And so for a visual medium like a documentary, you need to create the feeling of falling in love and having a secret visually. So we shot that on 16 millimeter, and Sally’s other public life was shot on 16 millimeter. So we were weaving in and out of different film stocks. And we wanted to keep the narrative tension of both of those lines at the same time.
And it just so happened that Tam was around from day one. Most life partners can’t tell the story of their loved one from when they were 12 or 13 years old and onwards from a firsthand account—but Tam can. So, she was an incredible storyteller. I couldn’t really believe it was real when I first learned she could give a firsthand account of what it was like as a 12-year-old and also a 55-year-old. It’s a gift. That’s real life—better than fiction sometimes.
I&T Today: Speaking of that gift—Tam, could you share with us a moment during the making of the film that was especially emotional or even cathartic for you?
O’Shaughnessy: I think that most of it—talking about Sally and reliving what she was like as a kid and as an adult and our relationship—was really joyful. But the hardest part for me was when I was talking about when she became ill with pancreatic cancer and then when she passed away. That was hard. And I cry. I cry because I can’t help myself—when I need to cry, I cry.
But while working on the film, and even now—and maybe it’s because I’m talking about Sally fairly frequently—I’m dreaming about her a lot. And it’s really wonderful because in the dreams, most of the time, I get to talk to her, whatever the dream is. But it’s just… it’s amazing.
I&T Today: That’s beautiful. What do you think Sally would say about this film and the decision to finally share your relationship openly?
O’Shaughnessy: I think it would be a mixed bag. I think she would love that National Geographic made the film. I think she would adore Cristina. And I think she would get a lot of pleasure out of the footage from NASA when she was young and going through the training with her crewmates and her friends, and seeing herself in space and just remembering how it felt to be weightless or look back at Earth. I think she’d love all that.
And then it would probably be a little challenging for her—the mushy, mushy stuff—maybe not as much that part. She was a private introvert her whole life. When she was a kid, she was the same exact way. So I think she might cringe a little bit with some of the interview matters and discussing why she did this and why she didn’t do that and so on. I think that would be challenging for her. And I might get a few dirty looks.
I&T Today: Cristina, for you—what was the biggest challenge you had with bringing Tam and Sally’s relationship to life on screen?
Costantini: It was a bit of a conundrum. I think she was confusing to a lot of people while she was alive. And I think she is confusing to a lot of people after she passed. A lot of documentary films about people who’ve passed—there’s a tell-all diary of, “And I did this,” and “This is exactly how I was feeling,” and “I was terrified,” and “I was head over heels in love with this person.” And Sally—she didn’t leave that kind of record. She wasn’t that kind of person.
And so a lot of the world was left kind of trying to interpret what she meant by one thing. So, what was she doing when she was teasing Kathy Sullivan in the robotic arm? Was that just a light joke? Maybe. Kathy took it as an act of aggression. Who knows? The marriage to Steve—what was she really thinking?
So there are a lot of Sally’s decisions that, as a documentary filmmaker, you don’t want to editorialize too much. You want to leave the ambiguity. And Sally—there was a lot of ambiguity in a lot of those stories. So kind of leaving space for that was hard for us, because it’s much more gratifying to say, “She was sabotaging someone, certainly,” or “This was definitely to cover up her sexuality.” But I think life is much more complicated than that. And so the documentary needed to be more nuanced than that.
I was making a film at the same time about this Colombian pop star named Karol G, who’s just crying at every moment of the film, telling you exactly why she’s doing what she’s doing, telling you how she feels and why she feels that way. And then Sally is the exact opposite. But it was a fun challenge, I gotta say. It’s fun—not exactly knowing.
I&T Today: Tam, what do you hope this film accomplishes—not just for Sally Ride’s legacy, but for the future of young women and LGBTQ+ individuals in science?
O’Shaughnessy: Yeah. Fortunately, I think that there are some very important, powerful, universal messages in the film. And it’s not like they were planned out in the beginning. They just emerged in the creative process with Cristina’s brain behind it. But I hope that young people and people of all ages and all backgrounds who watch the film really appreciate that Sally always lived her life as her true self. And she lived her life exactly the way she wanted to live it.
And I think the message from Sally, in the way she lived her life, is: Don’t let anyone try to tell you what to do with your life, how to live your life, or whom you should love. And I think those are big messages. So, I hope people find a little bit of inspiration and comfort in the film.
