The Right Stuff star Colin O’Donoghue on building a troubled marriage

Colin O’Donoghue talks playing Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff.

If you’ve been enjoying Chicago Fire‘s own Eloise Mumford in The Right Stuff, you’ve also been seeing an excellent performance from Colin O’Donoghue in the Disney+ series.

Colin portrays Gordon Cooper, one of the Mercury Seven astronauts about to make history. But at home, his marriage to Eloise’s character Trudy Cooper is on the rocks. Trudy is as strong-willed as her husband and has subverted her own dreams of being a pilot—leading to tension in a complex relationship.

One Chicago Center had the opportunity to chat with Colin O’Donoghue about working with Eloise Mumford, the challenges of portraying the Coopers’ marriage, and the general epic-ness of playing an astronaut. Learn more about his role in The Right Stuff, and also see what Eloise had to say about playing Trudy Cooper.

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One Chicago Center: There’s no shortage of information about Gordon Cooper; he even wrote a book. How did you begin to approach him and his marriage?

Colin O’Donoghue: I was actually kind of lucky, because I came into it quite late. Somebody else had fallen out of the role, and I only had four days before I started shooting to decide.

But in some weird way, I think the lack of timing actually [made me] freer with accepting that I was going to have to just sort of play what was in the script, which I loved…as opposed to feeling like I have to be incredibly reverential to this all-American hero. Because I think it was more important that we actually see the other side of what life was like to those guys. In some respects, the lack of time that I had freed me up to not be so concerned.

OCC: Gordon and Trudy’s marriage is a highlight of The Right Stuff because she’s the only wife who’s also a qualified pilot. How did you and Eloise craft what that was going to look like?

COD: That was the thing that was fascinating about them. I was so lucky to get to work with Eloise because she’s absolutely incredible. She does an amazing job on the show..

We started with sort of being able to argue properly…We were trying to figure that out together, which is really interesting, kind of what I think Gordon and Trudy are trying to do. They were separated and that was something that you just couldn’t be and continue to be a test pilot…You could, however, go out and drink two bottles of absinthe straight and then go on an airplane and fly it. But you couldn’t if you were separated for some reason.

So they are, I say, living and lying. In this version of it [Gordon is] just doing his best to make the relationship work…Essentially, they were living as separate entities in the same house.

OCC: The cast of The Right Stuff is so talented through and through; what was it like for you to come to work every day and build the relationships that really drive this show?

COD: I’ve got to be honest, very much like a family. We were all in Orlando together…All of these incredibly talented people, who are just the sweetest people in the world. It was a pleasure every day to get there and do that and spend time with them. I think that the cast is just incredible; everybody, their work speaks for itself.

OCC: Are there any particularly memorable moments from the shoot that you really loved? Or highlights you’d want to tell viewers to look out for?

COD: There are so many moments in this. When you’re getting to work on a show like this, there are pinch yourself moments, and it’s hard to pick out any single thing.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with everybody. [There’s] the day that I got the machine to sort of rotates and goes around, because only Jake [McDorman] and I got to do that, and that’s a real astronaut-y kind of thing to do. That and one day, I was sitting in the cockpit of the F-104 on the green screen, and I was in my flight suit and I was getting to fly this. I remember thinking God, this is like a little boy’s dream to be in.

I think what’s different and important about this version of that world [is] the aspect of the wives and the family…These guys were catapulted to become the most famous people on the planet. How do the relationships survive back then, or how do you even sort of contemplate it? That’s what I think is very clever in Mark [Lafferty]’s writing and the writing of the season.

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