'Astronaut Wives Club' Trailer: First Look at ABC's Spacemen Spouses Series

'The Astronaut Wives Club' Title
Title treatment for ABC's 2015 docu-drama series, "The Astronaut Wives Club," which follows the spouses of U.S. spacemen. (Image credit: ABC)

"Get to know the first ladies of space..."

Just days after releasing the launch date for its spacemen spouses TV series, ABC has revealed its first preview for "The Astronaut Wives Club."

The docudrama, which will premiere on the Disney-owned television network Thursday, June 18, is based on author Lily Koppel's 2013 bestselling book about the real wives of America's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts. [Watch Now: "The Astronaut Wives Club" Trailer]

The limited series' first 30-second spot aired during ABC's Thursday night (April 23) line-up.

"Get your first taste of 'Astronaut Wives Club' with promos aired during [the shows] 'Scandal,' 'Grey's Anatomy,' and American Crime," actress Erin Cummings, astronaut Deke Slayton's wife Marge in the series, wrote on Twitter.

The teaser provided a peek at Cummings, along with her co-stars Anna Garcia Swisher, Yvonne Strahovski, Odette Annable, Dominique McElligott, Azure Parsons, and Zoe Boyle, as the young first spouses of NASA's "Original 7" Mercury pilots. In addition to Slayton, the real wives were (ordered as above) Betty Grissom, Rene Carpenter, Trudy Cooper, Louise Shepard, Annie Glenn and Jo Schirra.

First key art for "The Astronaut Wives Club" airing June 18, 2015 on ABC. (Image credit: ABC)

"Behind these heroes are the housewives," the narrator says, just after a quick scene shows the show's recreation of the 1959 press conference where America's first men to fly in space were announced to the world. The astronauts are played by Desmond Harrington, Bret Harrison, Wilson Bethel, Kenneth Mitchell, Joel Johnstone, Sam Reid and Aaron McCusker (as Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, and Wally Schirra).

Other scenes in the commercial show the wives meeting the media and appearing in the pages — and on the cover — of LIFE magazine, as well as a celebratory ticker tape parade and what may be the show's source of some of the drama in this "based on a true story" docu-series.

"He is a cheater," says one of the wives to another, just before the scene changes to show one of the astronauts sitting at a pool's edge with a bikini-clad woman — not one of the wives — straddled over his lap.

"That's why they call them 'ass-tronauts,'" Cummings tells Annable in the next clip.

Playing as this unfolds on screen is Meghan Trainor's doo-wop-inspired song "Lips Are Movin," about a man cheating on and lying to his girlfriend.

The commercial ends by promoting the premiere date but not before also introducing the tagline, "The race for space was fought in high heels."

Click through to collectSPACE.com to watch ABC's trailer for "The Astronaut Wives Club."

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Robert Z. Pearlman
collectSPACE.com Editor, Space.com Contributor

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com, an online publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of "Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History.