The Apple TV+ drama “For All Mankind” takes an alt-history approach to the space race and one of the key astronauts since the beginning has been Danielle Poole, the first Black woman to lead a mission and the first American to step foot on Mars. Played by Krys Marshall, she’s often the most levelheaded among her more temperamental colleagues.
But the way Marshall landed the role is as unusual as they come.
She was at a casting office auditioning for a different show. “And as I’m leaving, the casting director says, ‘Hey, would you mind reading a thing about NASA?’ And that’s like asking, ‘Hey, can you quickly do this brain surgery?’ — no, I don’t know anything about NASA! There are 10 pages of audition material that would easily take me a week to prepare, and now I’ve got 10 minutes to work on it. I was immediately overwhelmed.
