Actress JoAnna Garcia Swisher has built a career out of making appearances on all your favorite shows. She’s been on Party of Five, Freaks & Geeks, Gossip Girl, How I Met Your Mother, Once Upon a Time, and The Mindy Project. She’s also been in the regular cast of Reba, Privileged, and Better With You, but something is different about The Astronaut Wives Club, premiering on June 18th.
The show is based on Lily Koppel’s book The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story, and is set in the 1960s when astronauts were like rock stars, and their wives were a close second. If this retro-fabulous series can give culture hounds their fix of sixties glam that went missing with the end of Mad Men, ABC may have a serious hit on their hands.
“There were a lot of expectations on these women as to how they had to manage their home and maintain their image,” says Swisher. At last the women behind the men are getting their historical due. “These ladies instantly became famous—posing for magazine covers.” It wasn’t all glamor though, “These were very strong women,” explains Swisher. “It was an extremely stressful situation. These ladies were having their husbands launched into space, unsure of what might happen.”
The women were integral to their husband’s careers. “If these first seven men weren’t married with a happy home life, they weren’t going to be chosen for the program.” Beyond that, Swisher’s character is good role model for her young two-year-old daughter she has with husband Nick Swisher of the Cleveland Indians.
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