SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Eileen Collins flew into outer space four times and was the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SPACEWOMAN")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We are go for launch.
MICHAEL LEINBACH: OK, Eileen, our long wait may be over.
EILEEN COLLINS: The space shuttle program was riding on it. The whole American space program revolved around this return to flight, and so it had to go well.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Six, five - three engines up and burning - three, two, one -- and liftoff of Space Shuttle Discovery.
SIMON: "Spacewoman" is a new documentary that charts her path into the stars beginning with a challenging childhood in school days. The film's director, Hannah Berryman, and Commander Eileen Collins joined us now from our studios in New York. Thank you both so much for being with us.
HANNAH BERRYMAN: Thank you for having us.
COLLINS: Yeah. It's great to be here.
SIMON: Hannah Berryman, you've done documentaries on Princess Margaret, Coco Chanel. What made you want to put Eileen Collins' life on screen?
BERRYMAN: I was approached by the producers because I'd done lots of films, I think, about strong women. And they gave me the book to read, and I read her book, and I thought it was amazing. And she wasn't from a background I'd expected. And there was a lot of jeopardy, as well, in the actual - in her career, and it was breaking ground for women as well. So the combination seemed amazing to me. I thought there was a great documentary to be made.
SIMON: Commander Collins, there's some tough moments in here. Did you need much persuasion?
COLLINS: Yes. I did need a little bit. I think it takes a little bit of risk to put your life up there on the big screen. You know, my family, what was the effect going to be on them? So I talked to my husband, my two kids, my siblings, who, you know, obviously grew up with me. Our dad - you know, big drinker. He was an alcoholic. Our mom had a lot of problems. My parents split up. We lived in government housing. Did my family want that story out there? And so it took a while to get the family to say yes and for me, mentally, to, you know, process what this huge project was going to entail because I knew it would be a lot of work, and if I'm going to do it, I'm going in a hundred percent.
SIMON: Your mother went to work in a prison, then Hurricane Agnes hit your childhood home. And one night, you had to call an ambulance for your mother, didn't you?
COLLINS: My mom was very much a people person, but she had some medical issues that were not treated properly. And without going into all that, I think it ended up affecting her mental state. And so she told me one day, you know, I don't know if I want to continue living. And that was really hard on me 'cause I was home alone with her and tried to talk her out of it. It was not successful, so I ended up going into the hospital with her. I was kind of her caretaker there for a while until we got my dad back in town.
I had just gotten my driver's license, so I think I grew up pretty fast. You know, people might feel sorry for me for that, but please don't, because I think I came out of that stronger in the end. And I enjoyed doing the cooking and shoveling snow and getting my younger siblings to school. And I prayed that my mom would get better, and she did it.
SIMON: Hannah Berryman, how did you ingratiate yourself (laughter) with Commander Collins and her family to get them to talk about all this?
BERRYMAN: I mean, Eileen's probably better at saying 'cause it's hard to know your own approach as a director. But I would say that I try to be incredibly upfront with people, explain why I'm interested in their story. And I think by the time we do the interviews, even though I don't do preinterviews, the family know what I'm interested in. They know that I'm interested in all the missions, and they know that I'm also interested in all the things they went through as a family. So I guess my approach is to be an open listener to hope to elicit everything that I feel that they have to say.
SIMON: Eileen Collins, you had a daughter in 1995, after your first mission. And then you commanded the first mission after the Space Shuttle Columbia had exploded on reentry. How did you tell your young daughter about the dangers you faced?
COLLINS: Yeah. Well, the first thing I want to say is, I think I had the two best jobs in the world. I was a mother, and I was an astronaut. So I got a lot of energy out of that. And even though she was 7 years old when I was getting ready to fly my fourth and final mission, I sat her down on the couch one day and - 'cause I thought her friends at school would start talking about the Challenger accident, which happened back in 1986. And they were going to say the space shuttle blew up. Your mom's going to blow up. And you can hear, like, second-graders talking that way. So I wanted to preempt that type of thing in my daughter's life, so I talked to her about the Challenger accident. And I said, Hon, you don't have to worry. This problem was fixed. And she said, OK. And then six weeks later, we had the Columbia accident.
And now I had to face my daughter and tell her, yep, space flight is still risky. How am I going to handle that? Well, she didn't want to talk about it. And so that ended up - over the next 2.5 years, as I trained for the - what we call the return-to-flight mission, she stressed out and worried about her mom. It goes to show you astronaut families worry about their loved ones because they think about the accidents, and, you know, people that deploy in the military worry about their loved ones. Life is risky, and we could sit around and hide in our homes and not do these great missions of exploration because we're afraid. But how is that going to help humanity? You know, there's a bigger mission here.
SIMON: There's a moment we see in the film with your daughter, Bridget, who is now grown. We're watching a video call of her 9-year-old self with you on the space shuttle.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SPACEWOMAN")
BRIDGET: Mama, do you want to come back home, or do you want to stay in space?
COLLINS: I want to come home.
SIMON: And at the time of this conversation, it was not clear that there was a safe way to get you and the crew home.
SIMON: Yes. It is hard to hear that. But I think I try to look at it objectively, being an astronaut, being a military pilot and test pilot. I try not to get too emotional about things, so I try to shift it to the mission and the importance of the mission. So I had two important missions. One was to raise my kids to be good members of society, and the other one was to keep my crew safe and get the successful mission. And I did those in parallel.
SIMON: Eileen Collins, you're also a retired Air Force Colonel, and there are some voices now being raised in this current administration questioning the role of women in the armed forces. I wonder how you see that.
COLLINS: Yeah. Women play a very important role. You got to remember this is an all-volunteer military. So people sign up, they want to be there, and they believe in the mission that they're doing. And if you have women who sign up to be - in my case - a military pilot, I did it because I wanted to be there. And, you know, I grew up reading books about pilots in World War II and the Korean War and even World War I, and they were my heroes. And nobody likes war. You know, I don't want to - you don't make a war happen, but I do think it's important - the mission to defend the country. So that's what I signed up for, was to defend the country and to fly cool jets along the way.
SIMON: Let me ask you both, what would you like young people to take from the life story of Eileen Collins?
BERRYMAN: I think as a woman and a mother myself, I wanted people to take, partly - other women have responded to it to me saying, you know, it's a film that shows it is all complicated, and it's not easy, but it's still worth it. Like, the complicated is worth it. As a woman and mother, myself, there is something sometimes particular about motherhood, that, you know, maybe some of the male astronauts who'd gone before, it hadn't been quite such a focus, even for them. And so I hope people take from it that you can do things, and even though they're complicated, it's worth it.
COLLINS: And I think people are going to get different things out of it. You know, we screened it in my hometown, and a man about my age came up to me and said, I cried through the whole thing. And there was a young woman in her 20s that said to me, that movie changed my life. And so I'm actually proud of the final product. It's - I'm surprised I hesitated when I was first offered the opportunity, but now I'm really glad I did it.
SIMON: Eileen Collins, who is the subject of the new film, "Spacewoman," and Hannah Berryman, who directed the new documentary. It is in select theaters now. Thank you both so much for being with us.
COLLINS: Thank you. I enjoyed talking with you.
BERRYMAN: Thanks for having us.
SIMON: And if you or someone you know is in crisis, you can call, text or speak with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAPELIER FOU'S "AM SCHLACHTENSEE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
