Janelle Monae is bringing her quirky capabilities to the big screen. The talented musician is set to star in a film about black female mathematicians alongside Empire star and Golden Globe winner Taraji. P. Henson, and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer.
She has officially joined the cast of the space drama called Hidden Figures, Billboard reports. Based on Margot Lee Shetterly's upcoming book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, the story centers on a group of black women who gave NASA the important mathematical data needed to launch the space program’s Friendship 7 mission, which saw John Glenn become the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962.
According to Variety, Henson will play mathematician Katherine Henson, and Monae and Spencer are set to play her colleagues Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughn. The film, which will be directed by St. Vincent’s Ted Melfi, is slated for release Jan. 13, 2017—which falls on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.