Did you catch the new 8 episode streaming historical drama series The Right Stuff on Disney+? It premiered on October 9th, 2020 to a bit of fanfare.

From the Disney+ website:

The incredible story of the early days of the U.S. space program, based on the iconic bestseller by Tom Wolfe.

This series is highly fictionalized and dramatized and doesn’t follow the book perfectly. And that’s okay. It’s getting some heat from reviewers in this vein, but I think everyone should just calm down and realize that there was no point in copying the 1983 movie in this new series. This series is not an exact historical account. And who cares? The movie wasn’t either.

If you’re on the fence, this behind the scenes trailer might help get you pumped up for it:

And here’s the official trailer:

Besides being sort of a space nerd myself, the other thing that got me interested in following the production of this new series is that most of it was filmed right in my back yard. Several scenes were filmed on Florida’s Space Coast. And most of the rest was filmed on a soundstage at Universal Studios, Orlando. Additionally there were a few scenes that were filmed in downtown Orlando, Lakeland, and Tampa.

The most amazing thing about this series filming locally is that I had the amazing opportunity to be cast as an extra in several scenes of several episodes. See if you can spot me! Just remember, long haired and bearded hippies weren’t really a big part of the early space program, so imagine me without any facial hair. Type your guesses (episode number and time hack) below in the comments!

Thanks for your interest!

Kurt