ABC’s The Astronaut Wives Club Has Officially Received A Premiere Date

By: Karen Valenzuela, @VictoriaNoir89



The Astronaut Wives Club has finally received a premiere date! It was picked up by ABC for straight-to-series (10 episodes) last year, but nothing was mentioned about it for quite some time after that. Now it’s official: The Astronaut Wives Club will premiere Thursday, June 18 at 8pm on ABC.



The show is based on Lily Koppel’s bestselling book of the same name that chronicles the lives of the real women who stayed behind as their astronaut husbands participated in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions to space. To say these missions were dangerous is an understatement, and the wives banded together as the only people in the country who understood what it was like to be married to an astronaut.



The series’ original airdate was in July 2014, but according to Deadline, the script underwent some creative changes. The Astronaut Wives Club was set to include only the wives of the Mercury mission astronauts, but ABC and show writer Stephanie Savage (Gossip Girl, The O.C.) made the decision to include the wives of the Gemini and Apollo astronauts as well.



The Astronaut Wives Club will take place in the 1960s, when America was in its height of the space race frenzy, when astronauts were seen as America’s greatest and bravest heroes. It followed that the women who stood beside them were also heroes in the eyes of the American people. The astronaut wives became celebrities and were seen in every household that had a television set. They were seen as the perfect wives. They became fashion icons. And they even had tea with Jackie Kennedy. But Koppel’s book digs deeper into the lives of these women—the relationships they had with their husbands, with each other, and with the American public. With celebrity and fame came hard times—heartbreak and tragedy—but the astronaut wives continued to cling to one another through it all.







The show is executive produced by Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz (Chuck, The O.C.), Len Goldstein (Hart of Dixie), Michael London (Milk, The Illusionist), and Janice Williams (Lola Versus).



It stars Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck, Dexter) as Rene Carpenter, Dominique McElligott (Hell on Wheels) as Louise Shepard, JoAnna Garcia Swisher (Reba, Once Upon a Time) as Betty Grissom, Erin Cummings (Pan Am) as Marge Slayton, Odette Annable (Banshee, House M.D.) as Trudy Cooper, Zoe Boyle (Sons of Anarchy, Downton Abbey) as Jo Schirra, and Azure Parsons (Salem) as Annie Glenn.



Catch The Astronaut Wives Club premiere on Thursday, June 18 at 8pm.





Let us know in the comments below if you’ll be watching with us!