After a 16 year absence, Tea Leoni is returning to TV. At first she says she was a bit worried about the effect her work schedule might have on her two children, but essentially her kids were telling her they wanted some freedom of their own.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , Tea Leoni’s divorce from David Duchovny has the actress opening up about her split.
Leoni says she can instinctively tell when she can needs to take on a project after reading a script.
“Sometimes, I think, I read a script, and it’s not so much that I know that I have to do it,” Leoni said. “I know that I can’t not do it.”
But her biggest fear in taking on a major role in a TV show is that she would have less time with her children. As it turns out, this was a one-sided worry.
“I have two really great kids that I like – teenagers too – and I adore them, so it had to be great,” Leoni said. “I laugh because my son, who’s younger, Miller, he’s 12, and I said, ‘You know it’s going to be a little different, different schedule,’ latchkey kid, all that kind of thing, and he was like, ‘Mom, seriously, I’m getting a little sick of you.’ I was like, ‘Wow, ouch, but great.’”
The new role will be in a CBS drama called Madam Secretary . Tea Leoni will be starring as a newly appointed Secretary of State who just went from being a CIA analyst to entering the White House. Essentially, this mean Leoni is playing a role of a politician who does not have a political background.
“I think that if this had been ‘come play a seated secretary of state,’ first of all I don’t think they ever would have come to me,” Leoni said. “I like playing a fish out of water, and I like the opportunity. I think the dirty little secret on this character is that she’s hopeful and she’s not cynical and she’s a believer. I think she believes that this can be done. There’s more wiggle room for me, being a character on television. I get to sort of try things out. And it’s fun to play that. Again, she’s a rogue secretary of state, not a career politician, and so she’s going to do things a little differently.”
Even though she’s just playing a secretary of state on TV, Tea Leoni admits she sometimes wishes she could call former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or John Kerry, to ask advice on how they managed to do it all and how they dealt with the hours. Madam Secretary is premiering this Sunday at 8:30 p.m. EST.
