Contained in the Haunting Obsession That Impressed Lucy within the Sky

Natalie Portman doesn’t play Lisa Nowak.

In Lucy within the Sky, she performs a married astronaut who, upon her return to Earth after a mission, has an affair with a fellow astronaut, performed by Jon Hamm, and turns into more and more unhinged when he strikes on to another person.

However that is a reminiscent define of what occurred to Nowak, an completed NASA astronaut who in 2007 packed her automobile with the type of gadgets that might elevate suspicion, placed on an grownup diaper—the type the astronauts put on in house—and launched into a 950-mile drive to confront her ex-lover’s new girlfriend.

Nowak’s destiny, so far as everlasting notoriety goes, was sealed the second the phrase “diaper” was introduced up because the disturbing “astronaut love triangle” story unfolded. Which is one more reason why Lucy within the Sky director Noah Hawley did not wish to make a mockery of his troubled lead character by hewing too near the specifics. Furthermore, the manufacturing wasn’t working with the rights to Nowak’s life story.

“There are not any diapers—no diapers had been harmed within the making of this film,” Hawley advised E! Information on the Los Angeles premiere of Lucy within the Sky. “It isn’t that story. The script got here to me as a fictionalized story that did not have that factor in it. It by no means occurred to me to place that factor in it. I feel the hazard of re-humiliation when somebody’s worst habits has been so public, there isn’t any want for us to hold a lantern on that element. That is not what the movie is about.”

Brian C. Brown, who co-wrote the screenplay with Elliott DiGuiseppi, advised us on the premiere, “This was a narrative we needed to inform, even when we had been simply telling it to one another.”

Hilary B. Gayle/Twentieth Century Fox

“I feel the expertise for the viewers goes to be one in all empathy,” Hawley additionally stated, “actually immersing themselves into her viewpoint. So even when she’s making these selections you do not essentially agree with, you are going to perceive why she’s making them.”

Explaining the foundation of Lucy’s battle, Hawley advised us, “You take her from life or dying, the risk-taking of going to house, again to earth the place all the things feels smaller and completely different.

Hilary B. Gayle/Twentieth Century Fox

“And her want to get again up there so overwhelms her that she actually does not cope with the sentiments that she had about being up there, she simply drives herself to get again up there, and because of this turns into unhealthier and makes selections that are not essentially the proper ones.”

“Oh, the diaper unhappiness,” Portman quipped to the Los Angeles Occasions final month when the film premiered on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. “It was an fascinating element, as a result of it was one thing that appeared so radical to all of us listening to it. However really it is a part of an astronaut’s life. They put on diapers the entire time as a result of that is what you do in house. It isn’t like it might be an uncommon alternative. It appears so much nuttier if that is not one thing you do on daily basis. However I suppose I nonetheless have a diaper film in my future to meet everybody’s expectations.”

In the meantime, the diaper-enhanced nightmare that basically did happen marked an incomprehensible low for a girl who had soared a whole lot of miles above the earth’s floor.

NASA through Getty Photos

On July four, 2006, Nowak actually had the world at her ft. The U.S. Navy captain and NASA astronaut was launched into house on a 13-day shuttle mission that, by all accounts, proved profitable. Nowak was accountable for working a robotic arm.

On Feb. 5, 2007, the married mom of three was arrested within the parking zone of Orlando Worldwide Airport for attacking Air Drive Capt. Colleen Shipman—the opposite lady, in Nowak’s eyes, who was relationship her man, Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, a fellow astronaut Nowak had an affair with for 2 years after assembly throughout coaching workout routines in 2004. 

Adultery, in the meantime, is a felony offense within the U.S. army. Oefelein and his spouse had divorced in 2005, whereas he was seeing Nowak. She and her husband separated in January 2007, proper round when Oefelein advised Nowak he was in love with another person. 

“She appeared just a little upset, however she appeared to be accepting of that,” Oefelein advised Orlando police later, per Texas Month-to-month. However Nowak did hold calling him on daily basis, he stated, being “extraordinarily pleasant and never adversarial.”

Nowak found who he was seeing when he was away on a mission. She accessed his residence with the important thing he had given her and located emails between him and Shipman.

Shipman was in Houston to fulfill Oefelein upon his return, after which headed again to Orlando, the place she labored as an engineer for the 45th Launch Help Squadron, on Feb. four, 2007.

In the meantime, Nowak had already began her drive to Orlando to be on the airport when Shipman arrived, having additionally discovered her flight itinerary on Oefelein’s laptop.

AP Picture/Chris O’Meara

Oefelein had advised Shipman he had lately ended a relationship with another person. 

“He did not point out any names or something, and he stated, ‘I had this discuss together with her and we will stay associates. However there isn’t any romance there or something,'” Shipman recalled to ABC Information on 20/20 in 2011. She had joked with him, “‘Hey, is there gonna be some loopy girl exhibiting up at my door, you recognize—making an attempt to kill me?’ And, he was like, ‘No, you recognize, you do not have to fret about that.'”

In her BMW, Nowak introduced together with her a knife, a BB gun, rubber tubing, rubbish baggage, a metal mallett, pepper spray and instructions to Shipman’s home. And sure, she wore diapers within the automobile so she would not even need to cease to make use of the toilet alongside the way in which. (Although having left on Feb. Three, as soon as she received to Florida she spent the evening in a lodge in DeFuniak Springs earlier than heading to Orlando.)

AP Picture/Florida State Attorneys Workplace

Sporting a trench coat, glasses and a wig, Nowak adopted Shipman from the airport terminal onto a shuttle bus that took them to the parking zone the place Shipman’s automobile was parked. After an try at a ruse to get Shipman to let her into her automobile failed, Nowak sprayed pepper spray into the motive force’s aspect window.

“I actually thought for positive she was going to homicide me,” Shipman recalled.

Nowak was apprehended on the scene and locked up within the airport jail on suspicion of tried kidnapping, the place—as her legal professional would later allege in a movement to have her assertion to police and the gadgets she had together with her thrown out of proof—she was left alone for a number of hours earlier than being questioned, and police refused her request to name a lawyer.

She insisted in her assertion to police that she had simply needed to speak to Shipman so they might determine the scenario with Oefelein, and he or she acknowledged that utilizing the pepper spray was “silly.”

Orlando police filed a cost of tried homicide in opposition to Nowak the following day. She was launched on bail with an digital monitoring ankle bracelet and ordered to keep away from Shipman. Her standing at NASA was positioned below evaluate.

The tried homicide cost did not stick and Nowak was formally charged with tried kidnapping, battery and housebreaking.

In 2008, a choose dominated that the gadgets present in her automobile had been admissable as proof, however that what she advised police throughout six hours of interrogation was not; the choose agreed together with her legal professional that they’d taken benefit of the truth that she hadn’t slept in 24 hours.

Accounting for appeals, delays and the courts not being in any rush, Nowak finally pleaded responsible in 2009 to misdemeanor battery and felony housebreaking of an car. Dealing with a doable six years in jail, she was sentenced to a 12 months of probation.

Per Reuters, she apologized to Shipman within the courtroom on the choose’s request to show and face her. “I’m sincerely sorry to trigger concern and misunderstanding and the entire intense public publicity,” Nowak stated. “…I hope very a lot that we are able to transfer ahead from this in privateness.”

AP Picture/Crimson Huber

Nowak was fired by NASA in March 2007 (the primary time a NASA astronaut was publicly fired) however had remained on lively army responsibility, working for the Navy in Texas.

By 2009, when Nowak entered her plea, she was divorced from her husband Richard. Oefelein, who retired from the Navy in 2008, and Shipman received married and moved to Alaska.

The next 12 months, a Navy board of inquiry in Jacksonville, Fla., voted Three-Zero that Nowak needs to be discharged from the Navy for causes “aside from honorable; she was additionally demoted to commander, a blow to her retirement advantages.

Nowak had quite a lot of colleagues who supported her all through the authorized proceedings. Some stated on the time, per USA At present, that she by no means totally received over shedding associates within the 2003 Columbia explosion and had been below intense stress, which presumably may have affected her habits.

Lucy within the Sky delves into the results of going into house on the psyche, with Portman’s Lucy saying at one level, “I simply really feel just a little off. You go up there, you see the entire universe, and all the things right here seems to be so small.”

Nowak, a mom of a son and twin daughters, stays in Texas to at the present time, working within the non-public sector and staying out of the general public eye. Oefelein and Shipman nonetheless stay in Alaska and have a son collectively.

“It was completely debilitating,” Shipman advised Inside Version in 2017 about her ordeal—which she beforehand stated had triggered her to develop migraines and different bodily illnesses that prompted her to go away the Air Drive. “I did not go away the home for a six-month interval at one level. To at the present time, I am at all times armed. I’m armed on a regular basis, 24/7.”

However she declared herself fortunately married to Oefelein. “I name him one of the best husband ever, as a result of he’s,” she stated. “And I inform him on daily basis. He makes me snigger on daily basis.”

Zazie Beetz portrays Portman’s perceived romantic rival in Lucy within the Sky.

 “I was actually adamant that A, this not be a narrative a couple of lady who falls aside as a result of she’s too emotional a couple of man,” Noah Hawley advised USA At present. “The affair is only a symptom of this bigger existential disaster she’s having. And B, this was a approach to remind an viewers that behind a tabloid story are human beings with dignity, who’ve made errors, who possibly ruined all the things, and have been was a punchline. The objective of the film is an try to return that dignity.”

He continued, “I needed to be very conscious of not giving the viewers an excuse to mock her or to face in judgment of her. I do not wish to parade her out into the general public sq. for individuals to throw tomatoes at her. I need individuals to know that this story is a tragedy.”