In an interview with refinery29 Leighton explains how she longer wishes to play roles that only confirm stereotypes. Rather she has chosen for different roles after playing Blair in Gossip Girl, now also streaming on Netflix, for such a long time. She wants to strong, diverse, dynamic female leads’.
In that same interview she connects this to the times we live in under Trump, and encourages women to stay strong and be independent, without becoming caricatured. Recently, Leighton has been mainly active as a mother and she takes her motherhood very seriously. Yet this year she appeared in a few shows, and she has her first movie in years coming up in 2019, called Semper Fi.