Madam Secretary
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50 free Madam Secretary trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Madam Secretary ran for six seasons as one of network television's most hopeful political dramas. It follows Elizabeth McCord, a former intelligence analyst turned professor who is pulled back to Washington to run the State Department, and who has to learn the job while raising three children and asking how her predecessor really died. This quiz covers the whole run: the McCord family, the seventh-floor staff she inherits, the presidents and rivals she works with, the actors behind them, and the international crises of the week, from hostage talks to nuclear standoffs. A few questions go behind the scenes to casting, real-world cameos and the controversies the series stirred abroad. It is written for fans who watched Elizabeth go from reluctant diplomat to the top job, and for anyone who likes their politics with a conscience. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing a little more about the series than you arrived with.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Bad Boys and Deep Impact actress stars as Elizabeth McCord in the political drama Madam Secretary?
Téa Leoni
Téa Leoni played the secretary of state turned president for all six seasons and was also credited as a producer of the series.
Q 02Which real secretary of state, later a fifth-season guest star, partly inspired Madam Secretary, its producers said?
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton later revealed that she watched and loved the series, and her cameo came alongside two other former holders of the office.
Q 03In Madam Secretary, Elizabeth McCord gets her job after predecessor Vincent Marsh dies in what suspicious way?
A plane crash
A plane crash over the Atlantic killed Marsh, and McCord spends much of her first year proving that his own co-conspirators sabotaged the flight.
Q 04Which US broadcast network aired all six seasons of Madam Secretary on Sunday nights?
CBS
CBS ordered the pilot in January 2014 and extended the drama to a full 22-episode first season only weeks after its premiere.
Q 05Which Madam Secretary executive producer directed three season premieres and appears as Chief Justice Frawley?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman executive-produced the drama with Lori McCreary and directed the opening episodes of seasons two, three and four.
Q 06Which real-life stateswoman played herself in Madam Secretary in both season two and a 2018 premiere?
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright, the first woman to run the State Department, came back for the fifth-season premiere with two fellow former secretaries of state.
Q 07Which Wings star plays Henry McCord, husband of the title character in Madam Secretary?
Tim Daly
Tim Daly began dating the actress who plays his on-screen wife during the first season, and the two married in real life in July 2025.
Q 08Although Madam Secretary is set in Washington, D.C., in which city was the series primarily filmed?
New York
New York hosted most of the shoot, with only some exterior filming done in the capital itself.
Q 09In season two of Madam Secretary, Elizabeth McCord helps end a decades-old US trade embargo on which country?
Cuba
Cuba agrees to the deal once a fugitive 1960s revolutionary gives herself up, and the US reopens its embassy there after 54 years.
Q 10After losing his party's nomination in Madam Secretary, how does President Conrad Dalton win a second term?
As an independent
As an independent, Dalton narrowly carries Ohio, which deadlocks the Electoral College and leaves the House of Representatives to hand him the win.
Q 11Before Madam Secretary begins, former CIA analyst Elizabeth McCord teaches political science at which college?
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is also where she studied mathematics and met her future husband, whom she married in 1990.
Q 12Which Cheers actress, a two-time Tony winner, plays chief of staff Nadine Tolliver in Madam Secretary?
Bebe Neuwirth
Bebe Neuwirth, who won two Emmys as Lilith Sternin, left the drama three episodes into its fourth season.
Q 13Henry McCord, husband of the heroine of Madam Secretary, is a professor and scholar of which subject?
Theology
Q 21Which Oscar-winning songwriter and Deadwood actor plays President Conrad Dalton in Madam Secretary?
Keith Carradine
Keith Carradine won his Oscar for writing the song I'm Easy for the film Nashville, and his Dalton was promoted from recurring role to main cast in season two.
Q 22Which Grey's Anatomy star joined Madam Secretary in season four as policy advisor Kat Sandoval?
Sara Ramirez
Sara Ramirez arrived as a series regular just as the long-serving chief of staff departed, playing a former United Nations aide lured back into politics.
Q 23Which Tony winner for Pippin plays press coordinator Daisy Grant in Madam Secretary?
Patina Miller
Theology is his field, yet the former fighter pilot keeps being pulled into intelligence work and later chairs military ethics at the National War College.
Q 14In which branch of the military did Henry McCord serve as an aviator before his academic career in Madam Secretary?
The Marines
The Marines had him flying F/A-18 Hornets during Operation Desert Storm, and he left the service as a captain.
Q 15Which member of Elizabeth McCord's State Department team in Madam Secretary did she hire herself rather than inherit?
Blake Moran
Blake Moran starts as her personal assistant, gets fired in the fifth season only to be rehired as a policy advisor, and ends up personal secretary to the president.
Q 16Which former spy and one-time student of Henry McCord marries Stevie McCord in the Madam Secretary finale?
Dmitri Petrov
Dmitri Petrov weds her in a White House ceremony officiated by former President Dalton, after their original venue burns down two days before.
Q 17What secret about the late Vincent Marsh does chief of staff Nadine Tolliver confess early in Madam Secretary?
They had an affair
They had an affair lasting six years, begun when Marsh was a senator from Illinois, which is why she is slow to warm to his replacement.
Q 18In the first season of Madam Secretary, Elizabeth McCord learns Vincent Marsh joined a coup plot against which country?
Iran
Iran was the target, and Marsh was murdered by his fellow plotters once he began to have doubts about the plan.
Q 19Which Emmy winner for Damages plays White House chief of staff Russell Jackson in Madam Secretary?
Željko Ivanek
Željko Ivanek won that Emmy in 2008, and his Russell goes from clashing with McCord over her unorthodox methods to serving as her own chief of staff.
Q 20In the final season of Madam Secretary, an inquiry led by Senator Mark Hanson threatens Elizabeth McCord with what?
Impeachment
Impeachment is voted down by the House Judiciary Committee after one member storms out, calling the hearings a hatchet job.
Patina Miller's real pregnancy was written into the show, and in the fourth season Daisy gives birth to a daughter named Joanna.
Q 24Which Mask and Pulp Fiction actor plays Elizabeth McCord's brother Will and directed many Madam Secretary episodes?
Eric Stoltz
Eric Stoltz served as the drama's producing director and directed both the opening and the closing episode of its final season.
Q 25Which creator of Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia also created the political drama Madam Secretary?
Barbara Hall
Barbara Hall wrote both the pilot and the series finale herself, and had earlier been a co-executive producer on the spy thriller Homeland.
Q 26Which Arizona senator, long a rival of Elizabeth McCord, becomes her presidential running mate in Madam Secretary?
Carlos Morejon
Carlos Morejon refuses at first, but she argues that their habit of fighting and then compromising is exactly what makes them a strong ticket.
Q 27In Madam Secretary, which political fixer runs Elizabeth McCord's presidential campaign and is her first chief of staff?
Mike Barnow
Mike Barnow agrees to stay only for her first 100 days, then steps aside to become counselor to the president, the job he wanted all along.
Q 28In Madam Secretary, embracing which issue at Elizabeth McCord's urging costs President Dalton his party's nomination?
Climate change
Climate change becomes the heart of a new foreign policy that breaks with the party line, and Pennsylvania governor Sam Evans takes the nomination instead.
Q 29Elizabeth McCord punches the groping president of which country in the Madam Secretary episode Break in Diplomacy?
Philippines
Philippines diplomats were not amused: the embassy in Washington protested the trailer, which viewers read as a jab at Rodrigo Duterte, then the country's real president.
Q 30What diagnosis explains President Dalton's erratic behavior in the Madam Secretary episode Sound and Fury?
A brain tumor
A brain tumor pressing on his frontal lobe is found after he insists on shooting down five satellites, and his deputy runs the country for two months.