Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, married just over a year, will play a married couple on screen this fall in NBC’s “Newlyweds,” reuniting the pair who first met while shooting “Madam Secretary” in 2014. Jamie Lee Curtis, who co-created the multi-camera comedy and executive produces it, discussed the casting and her own recurring role at NBCUniversal’s Backlot Pass event ahead of the show’s October debut.
Leoni said the reunion with Daly grew out of a shared instinct to return to lighter material. “We were kind of sniffing around to play together again,” she said. “We had a lot of fun on Madam Secretary. The world got darker, and we wanted to get lighter.” The two wed in an intimate New York ceremony on July 12, 2025, after a courtship that stretched back nearly a decade; Daly has said he proposed roughly nine years before Leoni finally accepted.
“Newlyweds” casts Daly as Tony, a divorced professor who invites Jeanie, played by Leoni, to dinner minutes after meeting her, setting off a rushed marriage between two people with little in common. Curtis appears as Tony’s ex-wife, a part she described with characteristic bluntness. Asked what she draws from her own life for the role, she said simply, “I’m really a bitch.”
Curtis has spoken openly about pursuing the project, telling NBCUniversal executives she pushed hard for a sitcom role after years away from the format. She and the show’s writers also settled on a title with a second, more pointed meaning that Curtis has flagged in interviews without shying from the innuendo.
Gail Lerner created the series, and Pam Fryman, whose credits include “How I Met Your Mother” and the “Night Court” revival, directed the pilot. “Newlyweds” premieres October 23 at 8:30 p.m. ET, giving Daly a return to network comedy nearly three decades after “Wings” ended its eight-season run. For NBC, the show anchors a comedy lineup the network is betting can revive audience appetite for the multi-camera format.
