Sally Ride became the first US woman in space in 1983. Two years later, she began the 27-year-long relationship that would define her life, though it was only revealed after her death. Ride's romantic relationship with Tam O'Shaughnessy, a childhood female friend, gets full telling in Sally, a new documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and arrives on Disney+ on Tuesday, a day after its debut on National Geographic. Only a few photos of the couple exist, hinting at how private Ride was. But in her final days battling pancreatic cancer in 2012, she gave her partner permission to speak about the relationship as she wished, O'Shaughnessy tells People.
"Our friends and family knew, and people guessed. It didn't feel honest," says O'Shaughnessy. "She told me, you decide what you want to say, how open you want to be about our relationship." O'Shaughnessy is a narrator of the film, which includes recreations of moments between the partners, "all inspired directly from Tam's memory," director Cristina Costantini tells People. "Sally is so closed off in her communication that Tam was the closest and most intimate voice that we could get to Sally," adds producer Lauren Cioffi.
Some criticized Ride for not being more open about her sexuality during her lifetime. But "when Sally and I got together in the mid-'80s, it was a little dangerous to be open," O'Shaughnessy tells the Los Angeles Times. "You could miss out on lots of opportunities with your career, with projects you wanted to be involved in." That's a concern even today. "The pride flag flew in space a couple years ago," Costantini tells the Guardian. "Now all NASA employees are being asked to take down any representations of pride." Even though Ride didn't come out publicly, "she still lived her life exactly the way she wanted to live it," O'Shaughnessy tells the Times. "She did the things she wanted to do. She loved the people she wanted to love. She was true to herself." (More Sally Ride stories.)
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