Leading Ladies with Heather Wright is a newsletter that helps you cultivate conscious consumption about film & television featuring strong female leads. Whether you’re a lady or a gentleman, if you’re looking for fun and digestible reviews, analyses, and discussions on film & television, this is for you. We also hope that, by reading and listening to our articles and podcast episodes, you will develop your own taste and tools to think critically about whatever you happen to be consuming.
What You Can Expect From This Newsletter
Free Subscribers:
Access to the Leading Ladies Podcast
Access to The Saturday 411, a weekly roundup of what we’ve been watching
Comments
Paid Subscribers will have access to all of the above, as well as:
Longer reviews and think pieces
The subscriber chat
Paid subscribers will also have the opportunity to receive a personalized watchlist — see the example below! Founding Members are paid subscribers who believe in this project want to support this work in one big chunk. Those of you who choose that option will receive a merch item of their choice, mug or tote bag, with the Leading Ladies logo!
About Me
My name is Heather Cate Wright, and I am a film & television enthusiast as well as an amateur critic and actor.
I have a degree in Media, Culture & the Arts, and a minor in Literature, from The King’s College in New York City. Our curriculum had its roots in the Liberal Arts, which was a continuation of my education at a classical school for all 12 years of my childhood and adolescence.
At King’s, I took classes every semester from the inimitable Alissa Wilkinson, who is currently a film critic for Vox. My classes with Alissa varied, from “Principles of Cultural Interpretation” to “Cultural Criticism” to “Postmodernism.” One of my junior semesters was spent on reading one book per week in Alissa’s contemporary American literature class.
I am telling you this because it gives me a sense of my creditability when it comes to delivering newsletters on film & television to your inbox. Basically, studying under Alissa makes me feel… validated?
But beyond the time I spent in college writing 300 to 500 word response essays to artifacts of our culture, I also just love movies and tv.
How It All Started
Ever since I can remember, I loved the thrill of a good movie. Some of my early childhood favorites include Barney and Out of the Box, as well as Little House on the Prairie and Zoboomafoo. When I was 10 years old, I watched one installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy at least once a week, and every once in a while would throw in a viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean. I was, as they say, obsessed.
What did I love about those films? Watching them gave me a sense of being a part of a grander story that was being told, one filled with adventure, risk, romance, the fight of good against evil, and eternity. I wanted to be a part of that grand story.
As my pre-teens turned into my teens, I was, of course, drawn into rom coms and romances. My parents had already shown me some of the classics: the Meg Ryan trilogy, Princess Bride, Gone with the Wind, and Romancing the Stone (whoops! absolutely not for children). But then my friend Emma gifted me Mean Girls for my 13th birthday and that was the beginning of my foray into all of the 2000’s era rom-coms.
A group of my 8th grade classmates began a movie club. We would organize marathons centered around a handsome male lead, and watch as many movies as we could fit into a Saturday. My friend Emma, the gifter of Mean Girls, had a basement mini-theater which was perfect for these events. We had an “Efron-athon” and you better believe we watched early James Franco and Christian Bale films as well.
My mom will forgive me for telling you that she used to say, “Won’t you girls talk about anything else besides TV?”
But TV and Film was our common language. It bonded us. It brought us together. It kept us in touch with the outside world. Later in high school, I spent many hours watching musicals, because I hoped to be in music theater. And besides American Idol, Glee was the first television series I faithfully followed as it aired. My friends and I began to dig into the black hole of SNL skits, and could not get enough of anything with Kristen Wiig (Target Lady, later star of Bridesmaids). She was our collective comedic hero.
It’s Up To You, New York, New York
My years in college were a time of refinement. In New York City, I had access to arthouse theaters showing films with limited runs. And my friends had niche, hipster taste too. I learned and viewed for the first time independent films. One college classmate was obsessed with Wes Anderson. I remember watching The Royal Tenenbaums after I had a crush on a boy who told me to watch A River Runs Through It. He later interned at Focus Features, and so of course I sought out any film produced by their company.
My freshman roommate lent me her Netflix password and I started watching The Office. My good friend recommended Frances Ha. My Old Testament professor assigned Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. My politics professor showed us clips of the Coen Brothers films, who had been philosophy majors in college (see, Liberal Arts students can be successful in their fields!).
My years at King’s were eye-opening to all that cinema can be, and my love for the medium only increased.
After college, MoviePass was released. I lived within a mile the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) which had a little theater. I also lived within a mile of an Alamo Drafthouse. We could reserve our tickets from the comfort of our little apartment, then run outside, hop on a citibike, and race to “buy” the ticket (free through the monthly subscription) at the window before they sold out.
With this method I saw countless movies that stick with me: I, Tonya; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; Hail, Caesar!; Call Me By Your Name; Ladybird; Phantom Thread; The Lobster; Three Identical Strangers; Annihilation; and more.
Which Brings Us Here…
I share this brief history of my love affair with Hollywood because if you subscribe to Leading Ladies, then you are subscribing to receiving my recommendations, my criticism, my reviews. You are subscribing, in essence, to my taste. You may or may not disagree — and that makes this fun! But I want you to know, at least, how my taste was shaped and formed and why, for example, I will never write about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While I would not categorize myself as a film snob, I would say that I have a somewhat refined and eccentric palate. So you might prepare to have your own palate expanded.
I started this newsletter in June of 2022 because I wanted and needed a creative outlet. I also love, as indicated above, talking and thinking about movies and shows I’ve seen with my friends. And I continue this newsletter because there is so much out there — how is one to choose a show or movie that is worth the hour and a half of your evening?
If you would allow me, I would be honored to inform your watchlist, to be a companion in choosing a show and assessing it’s worth, to be a site you check in with before sitting down for a movie night with friends or family. Let me be your TV guide and guru, occasionally delivering hot takes and unpopular opinions, but most often celebrating leading ladies (because I am, after all, a lady) and the power of cinema.
And you know what? I learn from you, too. For I am certainly not the only one with taste, and none of us have time to watch everything. We can make this a joint effort to curate a list of worth-while female centric stories for people of all ages and stages.
This is going to be fun!
