The 29-year-old former "Gossip Girl" star has landed the female lead in a pilot called "Making History", which focuses on "three unlikely friends who find an even less likely way to travel through time, irreversibly complicating their personal lives in 2016", according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Leighton will play a colonial woman called Deborah, whose contemporary beliefs are scoffed at in 1775.
If the pilot is picked up to series by bosses at America's Fox network, it will mark her first job on the small screen since wrapping a six-season stint on hit drama "Gossip Girl" in 2012.
"Making History" also stars "Happy Endings" actor Adam Pally, and is executive produced by "The Lego Movie" duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller.