At Thursday’s Denver Women+Film awards luncheon, the regal London-born actor Hannah Waddingham stood for photos with female admirers lined up two-deep on either side of her. 

“Do you know what we are together, ladies?” she asked while beaming her megawatt smile for flashing cameras. “We are (bleeping) Amazons.”

There’s just something about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with women, she later said of that moment. “I feel it from my toes up like a fizz.”

Waddingham ostensibly came to Denver to receive the 2024 Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award in a fancy luncheon ceremony at the Denver Art Museum. But for an hour, it seemed like her only purpose in life was to single-handedly and collectively lift other women up – by the hundreds.

“I am so passionate about the women in my life, and that started with my grandmother, who I’m the absolute dead spit of,” Waddingham told her gathered throng of devoted Denver admirers.

“I don’t mean to be morbid, but in the second World War, my grandmother would pick up my dad under one arm, his younger brother under another and run through the bombs into the underground. And she kept fighting and kept fighting while my grandfather was in the northern convoy of the Navy. There is no greater inspiration than that.

“I have met various incredible women throughout my career, but it all started with Kit Waddingham, more than anyone else. I wish she could be here now. But maybe she is, because that is properly a woman digging deep into her core and keeping on fighting. In fact, she’s why I called my daughter ‘Kitty.’”

Inspired yet?

Waddingham has transcended mere recognizability as an Emmy Award-winning actor in iconic TV series like “Ted Lasso” and “Game of Thrones,” and in films like “The Fall Guy” and the upcoming “The Garfield Movie” and “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part Two.” She’s become a symbol. A reckoning. A metaphor personified. And, as a single mother who has emerged as a Hollywood A-lister at age 49, she is, most definitely, an inspiration. One the London Daily Mail recently described as a national treasure.

And for Denver Film, she’s the perfect spokesperson of this moment to champion the cause of women in the industry, which is both Bridges’ passion and Women+Film’s entire reason for existence.

Women+Film is an annual festival that wrapped for 2024 last month. But in practice, it is a year-long celebration of women in cinema, both in front of and behind the camera. Its mission is to address crucial issues of representation, diversity and empowerment – not only by showcasing films of topical interest to women, but by encouraging conversations around important issues of the day, and by fostering a larger community of cinephiles, creators and advocates. That includes supporting women-led organizations and businesses that strive to drive positive change in the industry.

That mission was on full display at last month’s festival, which gave voice to the present generation of women who are not going to quietly abide the status quo in film – or any other industry that is lagging in equity advancement.

“If we all just treat each other with the equality that we all inherently deserve, we can all move everything forward that much faster, that much more efficiently, and things (will) just get better,” Sarah Young, director of marketing for PBS12, said in one Women+Film post-film panel conversation.

In another, Pia Long, a doula and educational professional at the University of Colorado, responded to a film about inadequacies in the French public-health sector by talking about the difficulties she has experienced here in Denver in her work providing guidance and support to pregnant women during labor.

“I came to this work as a young person who is Brown, and I really want to tell you, I had a better outcome and better possibilities in the ‘90s giving birth than my 24- and 26-year-old children do right now,” Long told festivalgoers.

At Thursday’s luncheon, Denver Film Programming Manager Ambriehl Turrentine talked about her guiding philosophies when choosing the 20 feature-length and short films that make up the Women+Film Festival, which dates back to 2006.

Her sweet spot is finding films, she said, “that shift the dynamics of underrepresentation and champion emancipatory advancement for marginalized communities,” she said. “That  showcase and celebrate the multifaceted experiences of womanhood, and that are committed to positively reshaping the landscape of women in cinema.”

To all of which, Waddingham would say, “Amen.”

Before Waddingham took the stage to accept the Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award from its namesake, the now retired founder of Women+Film, a short montage of Waddingham’s work left many of the women in the audience (and maybe a few men as well) “in a puddle,” as they say across the pond.

The scene that turned the luncheon into a good group cry showed Rebecca Welton, as the British football team owner, confessing that she has been undermining her kind-hearted simpleton of a coach from Day 1. 

“I am a (bleeping) bitch,” Rebecca gently tells Ted before laying out every terrible thing she’s done and why she did it – but with remorse bleeding off her face.

“Ted, I lied to you. I hired you because I wanted this team to lose. I wanted you to fail, and I sabotaged you every chance I’ve had.”

And when Ted responds by simply saying, “I forgive you,” there could not have been a dry napkin in the museum.

There’s something deeply moving about rewatching this culminating scene of the three-year series in a room filled with women who clearly identify with Rebecca Welton. At the center of her complicated appeal, as embodied by Waddingham, is the coexistence of complete badassery with utter vulnerability.

Waddingham knows women – and they know it.

But Waddingham made a point to say again what she says just about everywhere she goes: That she owes her mid-life career jolt to “Ted Lasso” star and chief writer Jason Sudeikis. Not for what he told her to do with the character. For what he didn’t tell her to do with the character.

“It was crazy because we didn’t really know each other, and when I read the scripts, I couldn’t quite believe that he was leaving me so much to play – even to the point where I was desperate for him give a little input,” she said. “I was like, ‘Jason, why are you letting me decide this?’ And every time, he went, ‘Because she’s yours.’ And that was just the greatest compliment I could ever get.”

That permission gave Welton the freedom to develop and present Rebecca as her own flesh-and-blood character wearing the skin that she felt most comfortable wearing her in, with the full faith and confidence of Sudeikis, whom she considers to be the best kind of man – a male feminist.

“It could be so very easy to see my girl, Rebecca, as the baddie,” she said, “and I was not having that. I took it very seriously from the word go that I wanted to represent the divorced person – and I wanted to honor both women and men – very carefully.”

At the end of the conversation, CBS Colorado weekend anchor Kelly Werthmann asked Waddingham to talk about the iconic Rebecca Welton power pose. And this is how the character herself put it during the show: “I have a secret. I make myself big. Before I go into the room, I find somewhere private, I stand up on my tiptoes, put my arms in the air and make myself as big as possible – to feel my own power.”

All Waddingham was given in the script was this: “Rebecca does her power pose.” Again, she approached Sudeikis. Again, she was told: “I don’t know. You decide.” 

What she decided turned into another immortal moment in the show. And Werthmann, after sharing a little about her own difficult divorce, asked Waddingham if she would demonstrate.

“Hell, yes!” Waddingham said, getting her Denver fandom on their feet and sending them out on an aerobically cleansing note. 

“Find it within yourself,” she told them. (They found it.)

It was the power of women, brought together by film, on full display. And if you were there, you felt it from your toes up like a fizz.