Madam Secretary’s Téa Leoni

PREMIUM: Téa Leoni tells World Screen how she was attracted to the quality of television’s long-form storytelling and intrigued by the prospect of playing Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst who left the agency on ethical grounds and is tapped by the President to be Secretary of State in Madam Secretary.

WS: What attracted you to television and to Madam Secretary?
LEONI: I was ready to do a television series because my kids had gotten to the age where they can turn their own key and make their own breakfast in the morning, and I thought, they’re ready. I was curious about television because the level of work being done, from the cinematography to the commitment from every department, is in many ways more incredible than in film. Television used to be more like film-light and it’s not that way anymore. And I was certainly attracted to the idea of living with a character beyond the beginning, middle and end that takes place in two months on a film. There is something about playing a character when you don’t know the middle or the end. I was looking forward to that opportunity. I had never done that. I had done a sitcom, but sitcoms are a little bit different.

Madam Secretary came at the 11th hour of me looking around and thinking about a commitment to a different [project]. If they had been asking me to play a seasoned secretary of state I wouldn’t have been as interested; actually they wouldn’t have asked me to begin with! But I liked the idea of a rogue, fish-out-of-water woman. I either made up or identified right off the bat with the fact that Elizabeth was hopeful. That was her dirty little secret. I like that dirty little secret. There are a lot of powerful women on television who have really fun, fetishistic hobbies and addictions! That’s fun and kicky and I’m loving a lot of these performances and the characters that are being created. I also like the opportunity to play a woman who is enough just as she comes, without any of that. We haven’t explored that, it’s as if a bunch of TV executives felt we needed to spice this up. I like the idea that Elizabeth isn’t particularly extraordinary. She’s smart. She’s doing her best as a mother. There is something about her ordinariness that I like. That’s not quite the right word; I’ll think of a better one.

WS: It’s interesting that you say that. Elizabeth is totally a good person, but she’s fascinating. Is it more difficult to take a person who is “good” and make them interesting than playing a badass?
LEONI: I think in a way it is, because the idea of lack of character makes for great drama! It’s spicy, it’s shocking, it’s titillating and there are no boundaries, there is a freedom.

One of the reasons I took this job, oddly enough, was because of the Henry character [Elizabeth’s husband]. I was so impressed that we would have a man on film that could stand alongside a very powerful woman and not derange himself or her in the process. I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of men like that. If I were a man I would be greatly offended by a lot of the depictions of men on television, mostly in that they can’t seem to be able to stand behind or alongside a powerful woman. I like the idea that they would have—shocker of shockers—a strong relationship where they hold each other accountable. Where they work it out; they figure it out. I’ve played the hyper-neurotic, not-so-gracious characters. I’m particularly thinking about Spanglish. That was kicky because there is compassion there. As an actor, you’ve always got to have compassion for your characters, good or bad. One of the coolest things happened a couple of weeks ago. A woman walked up to me and said, My 10 year old now wants to go to law school and get into politics because of you on Madam Secretary. And I loved that!

WS: You mentioned the Henry character. Henry and Elizabeth make an enviable couple.
LEONI: When we tested the pilot, it was really funny. You always test pilots and it’s more for shits and giggles than anything else. It was interesting because some of the women said Henry and Elizabeth look like they want to eat each other alive: after 25 years of marriage, these people are way too horny! I thought that was really funny. And the men were upset that they didn’t see more sex; the lovemaking scene was after the moment, it was sort of post-coital, as opposed to mid-coital!

Then we dug a little deeper with them and a lot of the women said, I still want to watch it. I still may not think that is my marriage or the marriages I see on television, but I want to see more. In a way that’s Elizabeth and that’s what people also respond to. Ultimately, she doesn’t run around pleading for her hopes, but you know she is hopeful. You know she believes she can get [the job] done. That’s a very strong aspect of human nature and at times we’re less in the presence of it. But I really like playing a hopeful woman.

WS: Madam Secretary depicts a different Washington, D.C. than the one we see on other shows—House of Cards, Veep and Scandal come to mind. Was the vision for the show a more positive way of looking at government?
LEONI: One of the things we set out to do, and it’s going to get trickier in season two, is we have never used, to date, the words Democrat or Republican. If [showrunner] Barbara Hall had an agenda, it would be to explore the polarization of Capitol Hill as it is right now, and what would politics look like, what could get done, if we didn’t have that. Barbara doesn’t have an agenda, but what she did by removing those words and staying out of that nomenclature is that you get to see—I know [executive producer] Lori McCreary has a close relationship to this—that the State Department is the largest branch of government with people who are [committed to] public service. It’s really easy to cite what people are doing wrong, but if you take a look at the individuals, people aren’t there for the money, not for the most part. They are there because they want to affect positive change. People don’t get into politics in order to start a war, no matter who they are. We forget that. We can list all the things that get in the way, greed and righteousness and everything else, but there are people who work very hard and commit their lives, particularly the people in the State Department who are stationed overseas away from their friends and family and their country, in order to help our relationship with the world. It’s an immense and admirable commitment.

WS: How did you research the role and did you fashion Elizabeth on any real-life people?
LEONI: I recognized, more so than maybe any other part I’ve played, that I probably needed to get myself a little more educated on the brash tacks and nails of the position. So I did go down to Washington. I did talk to people who work at different levels in the State Department. I talked to, yes, Democrats and Republicans alike! And I had a really good [meeting] with former secretary Madeleine Albright and got to ask her some questions. But ultimately, and I hate to disappoint so many people who are looking for me to confess that this role was designed after Hillary Clinton, but truly I’m fashioning Elizabeth off my mother, my father and my grandmother. They are three of the greatest diplomats I have ever known in my life. To have great diplomacy in life is a greater asset than we teach our children. But my parents knew that. They taught me a lot about that and it’s urgent, I really do try to teach my kids about it. But I wanted Elizabeth to be one of the greatest diplomats of all time. So she would have to have humor, too. I got that from members of my family probably more than from [Henry] Kissinger!

WS: The show deals with very serious topics but there are great moments of humor. Is it difficult to find actors who can play the dramatic parts and infuse them with humor when needed?
LEONI: It’s interesting. When you look at it, every actor we have has done great comedic work or has great comedic timing or both, and that wasn’t by accident. The levity has to be available not only to the characters but to the cast. If we were sitting around slathering over some of these incredibly intense and dark political issues, we might be accurate but we’d also probably be off the air. Nobody wants to slog through that. And the humor is not just a diversion tactic. The humor is very real. It’s a little bit maudlin humor, but I do have to say, we have fun on that set! I would say our rowdiest scenes are in the conference room in the State Department because it’s Elizabeth with the staff, and the staff is extended. We have our day players who come in as our background artists. It’s a bit of a dinner party with a lot of personality and then [director] Eric Stoltz is one of the greatest bandleaders of all time!

WS: I am extremely envious of how Elizabeth and Henry manage their teenagers! Tell me about the dynamics of the family scenes.
LEONI: It’s funny because I actually don’t know that Elizabeth is a great parent. You must have diplomacy when dealing with teenagers and that is Elizabeth’s greatest asset as a parent. Tim [Daley who plays Henry] has two kids. I have two kids. We know the drill about teenagers. This sounds so simplistic but have you ever had a conversation at the table with your kids where everybody waited and listened to what the other person had to say? I haven’t. That was something that Tim and I discussed and identified early on. We showed Barbara our take on it and said whatever they are talking about, nobody ever really listens at a teenage-led dinner table. I don’t care who’s in control; if there is a teen there the teen is leading the conversation. If they go dark, the whole table goes dark. They are powerful, that’s what so fabulous about teenagers—they are so powerful. They don’t know the limits of it. Sometimes they strike in ways that they don’t even know they are doing it. So we really like to bring that dynamic…to the scenes with the kids. Families are like free-for-alls, and you win some and you lose some. And I said to Barbara, let’s not make these parents perfect; let’s not always make it go their way. But the one thing that we have been very conscious of is the partnership between Elizabeth and Henry, because that will be what makes the marriage strong. And teenagers do divide and conquer. I don’t know where they learn it. I was the same way. Remember being a kid, you would ask mom when dad wasn’t in the room, and then tell him that she said yes! [Laughs] There are some things that teenagers or kids just inherently do, so we certainly play with that. Occasionally, score one for the kids, they got Elizabeth and Henry on opposite sides of an issue—they played them. But for the most part, that’s the two assets these parents have: diplomacy and partnership.

WS: What reaction have you gotten from members of government to the show?
LEONI: We had a premiere—which I didn’t know they did for television shows—but we had a premiere for Madam Secretary down in Washington last fall and there was a lot of positive feedback. A lot of people were saying thank you, we are working that hard, we are trying. It’s a nice break, a few of them said. I’m sorry about that a little bit, because [I cautioned myself], don’t take either [good reaction or bad reaction] too seriously. It’s a little bit like reading your reviews; if you don’t read the bad ones, you can’t read the good ones either! You need to understand that if you are getting any reviews, that’s good!