‘Madam Secretary’ Star Téa Leoni Returning to TV

Téa Leoni is coming back to television.

Deadline reports that the Madam Secretary star has been cast in NBC’s new multi-camera comedy pilot, Newlyweds.

Co-created by Gail Lerner and Jamie Lee Curtis, Newlyweds “is a later-in-life love story about a free-spirited woman, Jeanie (Leoni), and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship.” From Universal Television, the series is written by Lerner, who serves as an executive producer alongside Curtis, Eric Tannenbaum, Kim Tannenbaum, Scott Schwartz, and Lionsgate Television. Leoni is a producer.

Leoni is best known for her role as Elizabeth McCord in the CBS political thriller Madam Secretary, which ran for six seasons from 2014 to 2019. While she can most recently be seen in the fourth and fifth seasons of Only Murders in the Building as Sofia Caccimelio, which was her first role since Madam Secretary, Newlyweds marks her first network television show since the CBS drama. Newlyweds is also Leoni’s first multi-cam series since The Naked Truth, in which she starred as Nora Wilde for all three seasons from 1995 to 1998.

Additional credits include Bird Boy, Death of a Unicorn, Tower Heist, The Smell of Success, Ghost Town, You Kill Me, Fun with Dick and Jane, Spanglish, House of D, People I Know, Hollywood Ending, Jurassic Park III, The Family Man, Flirting with Disaster, and Bad Boys, among many others. Leoni apparently had multiple pilot offers, but her addition to Newlyweds gave the pilot a sure green light for production.

Newlyweds was initially set up at Netflix, with Curtis attached to star as the female lead. With the move to NBC, the Oscar winner is expected to take on a supporting/guest role. More information on Newlyweds, including who else will be joining Leoni on the cast, will likely be revealed in the coming weeks. It was only recently announced that Newlyweds was given a pilot order at NBC, along with an untitled Kari Lizer project with Katey Sagal and Jane Lynch, so it shouldn’t be long until additional information is shared.

NBC has been ordering a handful of pilots, including a reboot of The Rockford Files with Bones and SEAL Team star David Boreanaz as the titular Jim Rockford, and another one starring Boreanaz’s Bones co-star Emily Deschanel. Fans will have to wait for more information on Newlyweds, which seems to be slowly getting off the ground.