Téa Leoni

She plays a former CIA analyst thrust into the role of Secretary of State upon the death of her predecessor in an unexplained plane crash. But Téa Leoni, a stage name adapted from her full name Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni, was experienced in real life humanitarian diplomacy long before she became the fictional diplomat Elizabeth “Bess” McCord. Named a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 2001, Leoni is the third generation of her family to become deeply involved in the work of UNICEF — the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Tea Leoni in Honduras

U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Her paternal grandmother, Helenka Adamowska Pantaleoni, has been called the “founding spirit of UNICEF.” Created at the first session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, UNICEF was born out of the recognition that, “There are no enemy children,” and that the needs of the world’s children would not go away even though World War II had been brought to an end. From its founding, UNICEF has been directed to provide its aid “without discrimination because of race, creed, nationality, status or political belief.” Initially funded with monies remaining from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, UNICEF has always been heavily dependent on voluntary contributions for the bulk of its budget.

Helenka Pantaleoni served as the President of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF for 25 years, helping to raise over $113 million to aid the world’s children. Her son (Téa’s father), Anthony Pantaleoni, has served as Chairman of the Board for the U.S. Committee, and Téa herself was named to the board of the U.S. Committee in 2006. What began with Helenka Pantaleoni’s groundbreaking work founding the Paderewski Fund for Polish Relief in 1941, and then nurturing the birth of UNICEF just as the fledgling United Nations began its work, has become the family heritage.

Named as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2001, Téa Leoni has spent time in the field visiting projects in Honduras, Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, Haiti and most recently Jordan. Honoring her grandmother’s commitment, she has worked continuously to aid the work of UNICEF fundraising. “Anything that is UNICEF,” she noted at the 2014 UNICEF Ball presented by Baccarat in Los Angeles in January, “I’m going to try to be there. I serve on the board of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF and as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and they are definitely two different gigs,” she noted. “As an Ambassador my job is to be the voice for those who don’t have a voice in the world.”

“UNICEF,” Leoni has said “can help more children on a greater scale than any other organization. We are in more than 150 countries around the world. When you have a crisis, or a conflict, or a natural disaster, UNICEF is already there working on the ground. It puts us in a beautiful position to help organize the relief efforts with our partners.”

To see the impact of the on-going conflict in Syria on families and children first-hand, Leoni recently visited the Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan. UNICEF reports that the Syrian conflict “has affected 5.5 million Syrian children, including 1.4 million children living as refugees in the surrounding countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.” Impacted by not only the displacement of people but by the levels of anger and the sense of abandonment she encountered among the children and teenagers in the camp, Leoni pointed out that “getting kids back in school is urgent. There has to be a safe place for children. We are looking at the potential for a lost generation. These children may grow up without a country.”

Tea Leoni in Ethiopia

U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Transitioning from her real life role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to her fictional television role as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord has been a natural fit for the assertive, husky-voiced, yet inescapably feminine Téa Leoni. With what has been described as her “chic, Yankee, man style” and predilection for oxford cloth shirts with rolled up sleeves combined with elegant long satin evening skirts, Leoni is often compared to Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall. It is the perfect trademark for a Secretary of State who can out-drive a skeptical Senate committee chair on the golf course, out-charm a suave and polygamous African head of state by greeting all of his wives by name and out-deceive a sexist Balkan henchman proud of his cruelty and duplicity.

Explaining to McCord why he has asked her to become his Secretary of State, President Conrad, played by Keith Carradine, observes that, “You don’t think outside the box; you don’t even know there is a box!”

In many ways, “Madam Secretary,” aspires to be more like the acclaimed “West Wing” than like the equally acclaimed “Homeland.” There are somber moral challenges facing the United States and serious personal dilemmas for the Secretary of State and her family as well as her personal staff at Foggy Bottom. There is even an on-going tale of political intrigue as Secretary McCord quietly tries to unravel the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of her predecessor. But there is far less of the existential trauma and apocalyptic threat pattern that has come to typify many of the other Washington-based political thrillers.

Instead, “Madam Secretary” is part homage to the three women — Madeleine Albright appointed by President Clinton, Condoleezza Rice appointed by President George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton appointed by President Obama — who have served as Secretary of State; part exploration of the behind-the-scenes nuances of foreign policy decision-making and execution; and part examination of the impact of diplomatic power, compartmented secrecy, and political intrigue on a marriage of talented husband and wife and their three expectantly maturing children all trying to maintain a semblance of affectionate normalcy.

“Madam Secretary” is executive produced by Barbara Hall, Lori McCreary and Morgan Freeman. Hall recalls that Freeman hatched the idea for the drama while watching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testify during the Benghazi hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Freeman was impressed by the sentence that came immediately after Secretary Clinton’s oft quoted and repeatedly criticized, “What difference at this point does it make?” response. “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.” That, thought Freeman, was the reality of being Secretary of State. “He called me and said, ‘What did she go home to, what does she talk about?’ 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.”

Political critics and talk-show pundits have derided “Madam Secretary” as a thinly veiled attempt to promote the potential presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton in 2016, a charge the executive producers insist was never their intention. Instead, says Morgan Freeman, “We weren’t trying to do a show about politics. We have had three outstanding and very different women as Secretary of State. What we are trying to do is to craft a show about a strong woman talking about her job and reflecting on her challenges. It’s not as if we threw the three women into a blender and came out with a homogenized THEM. Instead, we’ve tried to learn from all three and emerge with our own vision of what a woman Secretary of State could be like. The show is all of them, and none of them.”

Perhaps the most important thing we learn about Secretary of State McCord is that she is a realistic moralist trying to live responsibly and effectively in the amoral world of diplomacy and national security. We repeatedly see her wrestling with the moral conundrums of diplomacy and of family life. She comes from the intelligence community, but she repeatedly wrestles with the recognition that intelligence priorities risk undermining essential diplomatic initiatives. She has three children, each of whom is differently impacted by her official life. The eldest child drops out of college because classmates make her the fulcrum of their disagreements with American policy. The middle daughter struggles with high school and adolescence complicated by a mother who has to bring her security detail to soccer games. And the youngest child, a son, is the resident anarchist in the house nursing an articulate case of elite conspiracy theory.

All of these dilemmas and dramas within a drama are catalyzed by Secretary McCord’s husband, Dr. Henry McCord. Conveniently for the storyline, he is an ex-fighter pilot who became a Professor of Religion and Ethics now based at Georgetown University. He is at one and the same time parental anchor for the family, moral conscience for the policy dilemmas confronting his wife and plotline foil when he is pulled into a super-secret intelligence mission because of his contacts with religious leaders around the world.

To its credit, “Madam Secretary” draws heavily on real world events to pose the dilemmas confronting the Secretary of State. Issues as real as the Benghazi attacks that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, or the Bhopal chemical leak disaster in India, or the genocide in Rwanda have been fictionalized in order to provide enough distance to explore crucial questions like embassy security, the sometimes conflicting demands of American commercial diplomacy and the welfare of host countries, as well as the complex requirements of humanitarian interventions.

And therein lies perhaps the most serious criticism of “Madam Secretary” — the inevitable time compression that is required by one-hour entertainment television. Events that unfold in the real world over years, even centuries, of historic background unfold in minutes and often without the full range of nuance that makes foreign policy decision-making difficult and dangerous. Even more serious, for the sake of dramatic resolution, the denouement of the week’s storyline emerges too quickly and too neatly. Rarely do policy plans emerge unscathed from the acids of multifaceted political realities. Rarely are foreign policy outcomes — even those that are successful — without blowback and unanticipated consequences. And, inevitably, there are foreign policy failures with real costs in human lives, lost diplomatic momentum, and embittered friends and foes alike.

“Madam Secretary” started broadcast life on Sunday evenings where it has been repeatedly impacted by NFL football broadcasts running long and playing havoc with the television schedule. Still the program is attracting a loyal and growing audience and appears set for a full network run of episodes. It has delivered solid ratings in the 18 – 49 and 25 – 54 demographics plus has become the most watched scripted broadcast on Sunday evening, out-scoring CBS’ hit series “The Good Wife.” The People’s Choice Awards have included “Madam Secretary” among the nominees for Favorite New TV Drama, and Téa Leoni is among the nominees for Favorite TV Actress in a New Series.

Téa Leoni recalls that when she was a little girl she often played a word game called “Artification” with her father. “I’d make up a word and drop it in a sentence. Then I’d see if he could guess what it meant. One of my words was ‘awepathetic’ . . . when you are so in awe of somebody it’s pathetic.” It is a game of artifice useful in high stakes Scrabble matches when it’s worth points to sneak a neologism by. Useful too, perhaps, even in a fictionalized world of diplomacy where creative word-smithing and even more creative policy initiatives are the stuff of accomplishment . . . and often enough, misdirection.

The game was good preparation for television drama, political theater and the ambiguities of diplomatic life. To “artificate” for a moment about Téa Leoni’s intriguing world of televised diplomacy, perhaps we should call “Madam Secretary” a “dilemarama” — a drama that explores the dilemmas of real world diplomacy and the human realities that confront those who seek to craft policy.