The Season 4 Premiere Newsletter
Featuring a Peek Behind the Curtain with Heather & Zoey
A new season of Last to Leave is finally here. It has been months and months in the making and we are so excited to be releasing new episodes again. If you didn’t know, Last to Leave is produced, hosted, marketed, and edited by us - Heather & Zoey! That’s a whole lot of jobs for two women who also have full time jobs… So, in honor of the fourth season premiering this week, we are going to get into the weeds about what it actually means to create a new season of the show.
What Does Producing A New Season Look Like?
Or Let’s Pay A Bit of Attention to the Women Behind the Curtain
A shared dialogue from Heather & Zoey
Heather: Our process has evolved in the past three years, but it always starts with a dreaming session. I am pretty sure that Zoey came up with that title - she’s the eternal optimist of the team!
Zoey: First off, thank you for calling me an eternal optimist — it’s both my greatest asset and my ultimate curse. I’m an ‘in a constant state of readiness, convinced that at any moment a shimmering doorway to another world will appear, and the epic quest I’ve been chasing my whole life will finally begin’ kind of optimist. It’s a lot.
Heather: It’s beautiful and I will take no other opinions at this time!
Zoey: I AM A BEAUTIFUL OPTIMIST!
Heather: Correct! So, we start by dreaming up a giant wish list of movies and television shows that we want to talk to someone from. There are no wrong answers and no swings too big. We just write them down! If ever one of us questions whether we should really go for a huge get, the other brings in our reassuring mantra of, ‘The worst they can say is no.’ And that is one of the enduring lessons I have learned from producing this show! ‘No’ isn’t the end of the world and you’ll never get the yes without asking.
Once our dream list is completed, we log into my IMDBPro account and start searching for the contact information of our desired guests (or often their representatives) and compile all of those into a massive spreadsheet. We do love a sexy lil spreadsheet in this house! The next part is both exhilarating and daunting - sending out the interview request emails.
Zoey: We send out a ton of emails — a true flurry of carefully crafted, dream-big interview requests. We've streamlined the process as much as humanly possible, but no matter what, we always end up glued to our chairs for hours, hunched over our keyboards like little movie-loving gremlins.
Then comes the best part: the replies! As soon as the first responses start trickling in, it’s full-on chaos — happy dances, frantic texts, and an obscene number of exclamation points flying everywhere. It’s genuinely one of my favorite parts of making the pod — the thrill of possibility, the magic of the “yes.”
Heather: We initially started this process for Season 4 in January of this year, but things really started to pop off in February. A shocking number of email threads for schedule coordination and time zone math and ‘this client isn’t available but can I pitch you these’ and those glorious moments when the interview was locked in. We are always over the moon when we get the ‘Yes’, but this season there were so many ‘yeses’ that we had to create a new organization system to stay on top of them all! By the time this newsletter comes out, we will have banked 12 interviews for the season - 1 in January, 1 in February, 7 in March, and 5 in April. It has been a whirlwind few months to say the least.
Zoey: A true whirlwind! With each season that passes and the more new experiences we gather, every one feels bigger than the last. As a Producer myself, it’s been incredibly exciting to start receiving PR requests where people are reaching out to us — offering the chance to interview creatives from up-and-coming movies and TV shows. It’s a surreal and humbling feeling. We’ve started building a real community — a network of brilliant, kind people I’ll be forever grateful for. Some we’ve stayed in touch with, some we can’t wait to reconnect with, and some we’re already dreaming up future collaborations with — and that fills me with immense gratitude.
This season feels different — smoother in some ways, more challenging in others — but the excitement remains undiminished. Every moment has been electric. It’s a dynamic, ever-evolving adventure, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Heather: The producer side of the job is vital and important and there would be no show without it, but that is not even the tip of the iceberg of the work that goes into each interview. See, we gotta have questions to ask and that requires a ton of prep and research. And that’s a whole other animal! When the show started, we stuck to a base list of questions for each guest with room to let the conversation wander. Now, we still have that basic framework but the interview breakdown is tailored to each guest and their featured project. The first step is, of course, watching the movie or tv show!
Zoey: This is when I really get to work my magic... on Heather!
Heather: And turnabout is fair play!
Zoey: If there’s something one of us absolutely loves but the other hasn’t seen yet, we’ll strategically book guests that force the other to finally watch it. It’s a sneaky little game we play — and it almost always leads to a couple of movie nights (zero complaints).
Once we’re fully immersed, we dive into the research, taking our time to really understand our guest’s work and craft thoughtful, meaningful questions. By the time we hit record, we’re armed with way more questions than we could ever squeeze into an hour — and honestly, that's the best part. It keeps every conversation crackling with energy and possibility, exactly the way we like it.
Heather: That brings us to the day of the recording! We usually log onto Zencastr, our recording platform, thirty minutes or so before the scheduled interview to get ready. This means something different depending on the day we’ve had leading up to the interview. Preparation could mean pumping each other up when we’ve had a hard day with pep talks or getting weird with it- funny voices, singing Wicked to each other, you get the picture. When we log on already psyched, we are riffing and gushing about the guest and the movie/tv show. No matter the day though, I can guarantee that I was aggressively googling for previous interviews or soundbites to ensure that I was prepared to pronounce the guest’s name correctly!
Zoey: And she always crushes it!
Heather: Thanks Zo!
Zoey: No matter who the guest is, there’s always a mix of excitement and nerves buzzing in the air. Over the past few years, I’ve perfected my desk setup — a true ritual at this point. I always have a coffee or energy drink to get me hyped, my trusty disco ball Owala filled with ice-cold water, a piece of paper for frantic, nervous note-taking, and a fidget toy within reach — usually a labradorite worry stone, though lately I’ve been obsessed with a glitter-filled stress ball. The essentials. The non-negotiables. My little tchotchkes for showtime.
Heather: I’m usually just rocking a big iced water with a straw, but on very special occasions I join the two drink crew and throw in a coffee. My desk isn’t as curated as Zo’s, but I do have a very specific way that I like the browsers to be set up on my computer. Zencastr to the right of the screen and the guest’s imdb page, our LTL email, and most importantly the interview breakdown all together on the left. My mic is on the left side of my desk, so that helps me to easily read our prepared questions from it while getting the best possible audio. And of course, the doc has to be easily viewable for typing notes back and forth to Zoey while we record. We have perfected subtly typing to each other in our shared Google Doc during the interview to pick the next question, decide when to move onto a new section, and give each other little bits of encouragement in real time! So that’s the producer side and the interviewer side! What are the other jobs we do again?
Zoey: In the past, we did our best to be our own marketing team — and whew, it’s no joke! There’s so much that goes into running a podcast, and even more we dream of accomplishing, but with just the two of us, it’s a lot to juggle. So this season, we decided to shake things up and try something a little different — and honestly, it’s been a game-changer.
Heather: Should we talk about Brea?
Zoey: Princess Brea? Absolutely, all hail!
Heather: Another thing different about this season is Brea! We announced it in January, but I will say it again right now! Breanna Benedict, beloved friend of the show, officially joined the team this year as our Social Media Coordinator. Brea and I have been friends since we met at the baggage claim at Heathrow airport in August of 2015. We’ve worked on countless creative projects together that would require at least one dedicated essay to discuss, but I can’t stress enough how special it is to me that she is now a part of the team.
The collaboration was initially floated to me during a (debatably?) too-boozy lunch with Brea last summer. She spoke into the world all of her dreams for Last to Leave and those fit seamlessly into all of the loftiest goals Zoey & I had dared to contemplate. I cried. She cried. I texted Zoey in all caps with one million exclamation points. Brea has been working in social media for the past few years and she offered to help us grow the show through a more strategic approach to our instagram and tiktok. Soon after, the three of us met for sushi and prosecco and began to figure out what exactly the collaboration would look like. At the start of this year, the three of us all sat on the floor of my studio apartment and dreamed together, manifesting a bright future for Last to Leave with colorful markers on printer paper. We’ve been slowly checking items off that list - this newsletter being one of them! With the new season on the horizon, Brea helped us work through the self-promotion discomfort and commit to a posting schedule. Y’all we had an actual social media content calendar in April. It was amazing. And exhausting!
Zoey: As we like to say — it was pure hot girl shit. This year, we leveled up and took some killer promotional photos at the iconic Music Box in Chicago with the insanely talented photographer, Cody Schlabaugh.
This was a huge moment for us — until now, every photo shoot had been crammed into one of our apartments or borrowed studio spaces from old jobs. But this? This felt big. It felt real.
Cody and I met in college, and now I’m lucky enough to call him both a coworker and a friend. Shooting with him was an absolute blast. We threw all our wildest ideas at him, and with a quick shift of a light or a flick of the camera, he turned every frame into magic. Truly, the man is a wizard with a lens.
The way it all came together felt like pure kismet — one of those moments where everything just clicks and you know you're exactly where you're meant to be.
Heather: It really felt like a dream come true - spending a whole day just working on Last to Leave!
Zoey: I can't even lie — I am wildly in love with our podcast.
Heather: I think we could gush about the impact of this show (and our creative partnership) on our lives until the ding dang cows come home.
Zoey: You mean ding-dang dragons, right? I swear, I think I just spotted one…[wipes tear]
Heather: I think we forgot one of the jobs… maybe the biggest job… the editing. It is probably the most grueling part of the podcast, because it is the only part that we really do completely alone. When we first started the show, Zoey was the only editor and we would hang out while she worked. I’d sit on her bed putzing around on adobe express designing graphics or writing episode descriptions while she sat at her desk cutting the pod. I have really fond memories of those times, but it just wasn’t efficient or a fair division of the labor. Like I said, the edit can be grueling! A few episodes into the first season, Zoey taught me the keyboard shortcuts and her project organization system (your edit really lives and dies by this) and I dove in.
Zoey: I have to say — this is the mark of a true collaborator. Heather actually learned how to edit just so we could evenly split the workload. I don’t think I’ve ever fully said this out loud, so I’m saying it now: it means the world to me. I’ve worked with people in the past who didn’t operate that way, and let me tell you — this is different. I feel free. I feel safe. And I feel endlessly grateful for this creative partnership.
Heather: And now I’m crying!
Zoey: Anyway, THE EDITING! It’s a necessary part of the job, and honestly, one we’ve come to love. We want everyone who joins us to sound their absolute best. Getting to go back through our conversations — hearing the passion, the excitement, the laughs, the insights (and yes, sometimes even the tears) — it’s such a gift.
The heart of this podcast has always been to shine a light on the people in the industry who don’t always get asked about their work, and to create something that can also serve as a real tool for people dreaming of joining it. The edit? It’s the final touch — the polish, the sparkle, the love we put into making every episode the best it can be.
Heather: Now, we split the edits in half - generally one episode for each of us to cut a month! Despite the slog that it can often be, I do find an extreme level of satisfaction in sculpting the interview to best tell the guest’s story and ensure that their message is coming through clearly to our audience. After spending a few hours with the project, I find myself anticipating their vocal tics, sensing when the um is coming, and ready to slice that familiar waveform from the sequence. My confidence as an editor has grown immensely over the past three years and that’s pretty damn cool!
Zoey: At the end of the day, every late night, every frantic email, every glitter-stress-ball-squeeze is worth it — because we get to build something we believe in, together. Here's to Season 4, here’s to Last to Leave, here’s to the magic we’ve made — and here’s to no signs of stopping anytime soon.
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Recommendations
What are we watching?
Heather: Life has been so busy lately that I really haven’t been watching a ton (yes, Heather did do another show this month…) However, I am pleased to announce that I have FINALLY hopped on the Hacks train. It was one of those shows that got really popular really fast and then I just couldn’t. (I know I know being a hater is dumb but I just love to find things on my own - listen, I AM working on it!) But I broke through that block and I have been tearing through the show. I am now at the start of the third season and cannot wait to be caught up. The writing is so sharp and I am a sucker for stories with brash loners navigating the difficulties of connecting.
I’ve been slacking on movies lately (see above note about being busy!), but I did see Sinners in theatres and absolutely loved it. The film was so creative and engaging and that one sequence (you know the one) will be sticking in my mind for a long time. I can’t wait to see it again.
Zoey: I have to be honest — I’m deep in my reality TV cocoon right now. Survivor, Vanderpump Villa, the occasional Mob Wife sighting — I’m fully locked into the lives, chaos, and drama of people I will never meet and problems I will never have to solve. And honestly? I need it.
Because the shows that actually pull me out of my cocoon? They’re heavy. I’m savoring every brutal, brilliant minute of the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a tough watch, no doubt, but I’ve been rooting for these women for years — I can’t walk away now.
I’m also plunging back into Wheel of Time and The Last of Us — and let me tell you, those hurt too.
So you see why I need a little messy reality TV escapism, right?
If you need me, I’ll be sipping an Aperol spritz at the Villa, pretending the only drama in my life is who’s getting the best cabana chair.
What are we reading?
Heather: No comment! BUT I am going on vacation in May and I will be bringing at least one book to disappear into!
Zoey: I’m deep back in my dragon era — and loving it. I just finished The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli, and it was such a fun ride. I really loved the story and the journey our main character goes on. That said, I’m still deciding whether I’m going to dive into the next book in the series.
While I mull that over, I’ve cracked open Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose Darling. I’m only about 30–40 pages in, but it already feels thrilling — and very dragon-heavy, which is exactly what I’m craving right now.
I’m not entirely sure what sparked this most recent dragon obsession, but honestly? I’m not questioning it. It makes me feel like a wizard, and I’m just going to ride that magic as long as it lasts. ALAKAZAM. (Picture me vanishing in a cloud of glitter and smoke...)
What are we listening to?
Heather: Lorde releasing What Was That has got me feeling nostalgic as hell and I have been bumping Melodrama all over again. I’ve also been diving deeper into Doechii’s discography lately! I often get stuck in a loop of my queer sad indie girls (yes, I am seeing Lucy Dacus at the Chicago Theatre later this week, thank you), but it has been a lot of fun to get out of my comfort zone and explore a new (to me) artist. Lyrics are paramount to me in the music that I like and Doechii has such a way with words that has got me playing her albums on repeat.
Zoey: I hate to do this to you again... but I’m still deep in my Maude Latour era. She just dropped a new song called Miss America and it’s been on nonstop repeat. Also in heavy rotation: What Was That by Lorde. Lorde is basically a forever staple for me — and getting new music from both Lorde and Maude in the same month? I have no choice but to thank my pop goddesses for blessing me.
You’re also catching me right on the edge of chaos: I’m about to see Charli XCX live. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready. I wasn’t even sure how to prepare, so my girlfriend made me a curated playlist and I panic-bought Sun Shield sunglasses to wear to the show. Will I survive? Stay tuned for the next newsletter...
Letting my Chandler Bing insights lead me………could you guys BE any more badass??!!?! Love the article and excited to listen to the new episode!!!❤️❤️❤️
Great read! Loved the insight into creating and working on a podcast!