There are no Secret Service agents flanking Téa Leoni as she strides into a Manhattan restaurant, and in her jeans, white tennis shoes, and yanked-back ponytail, she’s not dressed the way a secretary of state might be. But it’s instantly easy to see why Leoni is so convincing playing precisely that role in the new CBS series Madam Secretary (premiering Sept. 21): With her confident posture, piercing gaze, and firm handshake, she’s a natural-born inspirer of confidence.
Though she complains jovially about the sometimes 17- or 18-hour workdays she spends filming her new show, Leoni, 48, is a lively lunch companion, chatting in her husky voice without a trace of star guardedness and vigorously enjoying her food. (She dives into a kale salad and bread—complete with butter and jelly—and later asks for a latte in a huge cup: “There’s something so satisfying about putting a cereal bowl up to your mouth and getting caffeine instead of Cap’n Crunch!”)
Although Leoni made her initial impact on TV, doing marvelously loose-limbed physical comedy in the sitcom The Naked Truth (1995–98), she’s spent most of her career playing the plucky costar in films like The Family Man and Fun With Dick and Jane. She clearly thinks it’s time to take center stage, and that television is the place to do it. “I was ready,” she says.
Leoni read Madam Secretary’s pilot script, by executive producer Barbara Hall (Joan of Arcadia, Homeland), and “by page three my imagination was working, visualizing it. I put it down thinking, I’ll regret it if I don’t do this. She’s a different kind of woman than we’ve ever seen on television or in politics.” There have been three female secretaries of state—Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton—and now there’s the realistic but fictional Elizabeth McCord, who deals with hostage negotiations and diplomacy with foreign despots while also handling a boisterous home life with her professor husband, Henry (Tim Daly), and three children.
Seeing Leoni in this role, you realize that she’s a throwback to stars like Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck—take-charge women whose allure included a sharp sense of humor as well as lustrous good looks. These days, there aren’t many roles for this kind of woman in movies, where a more blatant sexiness or indie-film quirkiness is considered a box office draw. Instead, TV has become the new haven for three-dimensional female characters, as actresses like Kerry Washington in Scandal, Robin Wright in House of Cards, and Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife project a steeliness that’s also flexible enough to accommodate wry wit and an exhilarating energy.
Madam Secretary comes from a perhaps surprising source: Morgan Freeman, Leoni’s costar in 1998’s Deep Impact, who hatched the idea for the show with his producing partner, Lori McCreary. “Morgan was watching Hillary [Clinton] during the Benghazi hearings,” says McCreary. “He called me and said, ‘What did she go home to, what does she talk about?’ ” Says Hall, “We all wanted to show a woman whose personal life wasn’t falling apart or experiencing scandalous events; she’s doing what she thinks is right, in government and at home.”
Leoni says the producers allayed certain doubts she had about playing a high-powered woman on a network drama. “I knew Morgan was going to protect this character. He was never going to let it become Madam Sexetary.” She also had a broader concern: “There’s often an assumption that men in 2014 have an unwillingness to partner with a strong woman. I can’t believe more people aren’t offended by that. I’m tired of it, and I’m way too old to play out that scenario.” Hall agreed, and made sure to give Henry equal footing with his politically powerful spouse.
As Leoni enters into a new TV marriage, her real-life one has recently ended; she and David Duchovny, who have two children—Madelaine West, 15, and Kyd Miller, 12—divorced this summer after 17 years together, punctuated by two separations. But their relationship is better than amicable, says the actress, whose ring finger still bears the wedding-band tattoo she got in 2007 to match Duchovny’s. “Listen, David gave me the two greatest gifts on the planet; I don’t know how I could ever hate him,” she says. “We’ve always loved each other, and we adore these kids. … I’m not playing stupid—I understand feelings can get hurt and things can get icky. We’ve had our moments like that. But these kids are too important, and he feels the same way, I know it. He’s a good guy.”
Duchovny, who has a place in New York but has been in L.A. working on a series about Charles Manson, had the kids for “most of the summer,” adds Leoni, who visited. “It’s fun to spend time as this unit that we still are, and it’s easy to communicate about them. There was that brief moment when the kids said, ‘Oh, I can work a scam on you here and him over there,’ and we were like, ‘News flash—no!’ ”
For his part, Duchovny says, “Téa and I had a long time together; we’ll always be connected and there for each other.” He knew Madam Secretary was something special for her when she “committed to it right away. She usually takes a long time to consider things from all angles.”
Leoni is also happy to be filming in New York, where she grew up. “L.A. is good for like four days, and then you’ve gotta get out,” she says. “I wanted my kids close to my parents and David’s mother. I wanted them to get to know their grandparents. I was very close to mine.”
Leoni’s paternal grandmother, Helenka Pantaleoni, was for 25 years the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and the actress has carried on that tradition as an official UNICEF ambassador since 2001, meeting and working with children in countries including Ethiopia, Jordan, and Haiti. It’s possible that such international experience will inform her portrayal inMadam Secretary, but Leoni has also received some high-level personal pointers. “I had a great breakfast with Madeleine Albright,” she says. “Facing sexism as the first woman in that job, she told me things I’ll take to the grave. She did say that although there was a concern about sending a woman to negotiate in areas where women are not revered or educated, ‘All the trouble I had was here, never over there.’ ”
Leoni hopes the show arouses curiosity about how government works—or doesn’t work. “I’m sorry that young people aren’t ignited by politics, that it’s a dirty word. My daughter is interested in the stalemate in Congress; she says, ‘So neither side budges and that’s it? We don’t do anything?’ Making a case and negotiating—that’s what we want to do in the show. Wouldn’t compromise and agreement be great things to promote?”
Leoni is diplomatic about social media in our lives, though she prefers to keep her distance. “People seem to really enjoy it, but watching people scrolling through relationships with their thumb? It seems weird. I’d rather be fishing.”
She’s not kidding: An avid fly fisher, Leoni likes to get away for brief solitary trips in upstate New York to cast for trout using barbless hooks. “It’s a very Zen pastime,” she says. “My favorite meal is when I pull in something good-sized, skin it right there on the river, and bring it home and fry it. All but a few dinners go back.”
For now, she’s immersing herself in the world of politics as seen on TV. “Women are masters of diplomacy,” she says. “We’re probably at an unfair advantage, maybe because we know we can’t rely upon a good right hook. We may have one, but that’s not where we’ve been taught to go. I want to celebrate that there is a difference between the sexes; I want thatbipartisanship to last forever.”
She leans in closer. “I do know this already: Secretary of state may be the most fascinating job in the world, and I would never want it in real life. I’d still rather be fishing.”
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