Katherine Heigl To Star As Trailblazer Victoria Woodhull In Limited Series From Oakhurst Entertainment

Katherine Heigl is returning to the small screen in a big way, portraying historical figure Victorial Woodhull in the new limited series Woodhull. The series, which hails from Oakhurst Entertainment, will follow the life of Woodhull, who became the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872. She ran under the Equal Rights Party, with famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate. While no creator has been named, the project will be based on multiple biographies of Woodhull, which Oakhurst Entertainment, founded by Jai Khanna and Marina Grasic, optioned earlier this year.

Woodhull was also the first female ever to address the United States Congress and, with her sister Tennessee, was the first woman to run a brokerage firm on Wall Street.

The sisters founded their own newspaper – Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly – in 1870, which would land her in jail just days before the election. 

Woodhull published a rather provocative piece in her paper detailing an adulterous affair between prominent preacher Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Richards Tilton. Since the piece had more salacious details than was considered appropriate at the time, the sisters were arrested on obscenity charges.