Hidden Figures Used Kevin Costner's Hairline To Hit Back At Fox's Ridiculous Requests
There's no question that 2016's "Hidden Figures" faced an uphill battle from the beginning of its development. The film was only the third feature directed and co-written by an independent filmmaker, Theodore Melfi, who wrote the script with Allison Schroeder. A period piece set in the 1960s, it follows the true story of three brilliant Black mathematicians who join a task group at NASA in order to help America's space program, and there's no question that the women are the movie's heroines. Being released into a climate that was very hostile to both people of color and women at the time (aka the first months of the Trump administration) and not having a huge pedigree of A-list talent behind the camera, "Hidden Figures" would have to be great in order to be noticed, just like the women the film's about.
Surely, the studio executives at Fox Searchlight, being risk-averse as per their jobs, knew all of this inherently, and were keeping a close eye on the production at every turn in order to maximize the film's appeal to a marketplace they knew could be indifferent, if not hostile. However, they certainly didn't want to come right out and voice concerns against the film that could be construed as bigoted or misogynistic. Thus, they began to have issues and nitpicks with the movie that weren't merely short-sighted, but became downright absurd.
One of the execs' most egregious notes on the movie involved the very subject of the film itself, a criticism so bizarre that it would seem to indicate that they wanted Melfi and company to make an entirely different movie instead. Fortunately, Melfi was given a gift of a leverage point to use against this note in the form of star Kevin Costner, whose own desire to play down his movie-star image in the movie helped Melfi sideswipe the silly request from the studio.
Melfi trades mathematics for Costner's receding hairline
At an event celebrating Oscar-nominated screenwriters in 2017, Melfi revealed that one of Fox Searchlight's biggest notes while he was making "Hidden Figures" was that the studio was concerned that a movie about mathematicians had, well, too much math in it. While he was attempting to figure out a way to distract the execs from this absurd note an exec tried to impose on him, he was gifted with his star, Costner, asking for his own stipulation regarding his character of Al Harrison, the director of the Space Task Group that hires mathematicians Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). As Melfi recalled during the event:
"This one studio [Fox Searchlight] person said, 'Do we have to have so much math?' So I pretended to be interested but, no, it's about math. And then Kevin Costner calls me one night and says, 'I've been thinking about a receding hairline.' I said, 'OK. Why?' He said, 'I just think this guy would have a receding hairline.' And so I call the studio because I love to torture them, and said, 'Kevin Costner wants a receding hairline,' and they flip out, saying 'We want Kevin Costner just the way he is!' So I went back to Kevin and said everyone at the studio thinks it will make you look old. He went, 'Oh. Can I chew gum?'"
Fortunately, this was an instance of two wrong notes making a right, as math was allowed to stay at the center of "Hidden Figures" and Costner got to portray Harrison as schlubby without resorting to shaving his head or increasing his time in the makeup chair every morning. The film went on to be generally well-received, became the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee of the year, and is supposedly getting a musical adaptation. How ironic, then, that one exec wanted to give the films title — which already features a double meaning — a third meaning, and nearly robbed it of all meaning. Just goes to show you that notes should never be mandates.