Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Sally Wainwright

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is focused on Executive Producer, Writer and Director Sally Wainwright.

Having a deep interest in writing since she was a little girl, Sally attended the University of York, studying English and Related Literature. While still at University, she took an original play entitled “Hanging On” to the Edinburgh Festival where she found an agent.

She eventually started writing for the series The Archers, and followed that up by writing for the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street, a series she ironically had hoped to write for when she was a little girl.

After that she began working on original programming, creating the TV series At Home with the Braithwaites and followed that up with the 3-part mini-series Unforgiven, which received several awards, including Sally winning the Writer of the Year Award. [This is just one of the more than two dozen awards Sally has received for her writing and/or projects.]

She then moved on executive producer the British TV series Scott & Bailey before creating and wri ting the beloved mini-series Last Tango in Halifax. This was followed by her creating and writing the British crime drama Happy Valley; a show in which she made her directorial debut.

Her most recent work will be the two-hour drama To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters that will debut on PBS this weekend, focusing on the lives of legendary writers Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte.

Sally’s next project, expected to begin filming next year, will be Shibden Hall, an 8-episode drama that will be set in West Yorkshire in 1832, telling the story of landowner Anne Lister, who – after years of exotic travel and social climbing – is determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home in Halifax.

Sally is married with two sons, has a love for Maine Coon cats and can be followed at Twitter @spiceyw.