Though it’s been 21 years since actors Jane Seymour and Joe Lando costarred on the drama series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” they’re back together and say it’s like they’ve never been away.
The two have remained best friends since they tamed the Wild West in “Dr. Quinn” in the late ‘90s. And they find themselves paired again for a classic Christmas movie, “A Christmas Spark,” premiering on Lifetime Nov. 27. Eight years ago they reunited in a comic bit for “Funny or Die,” but since then they have gone their separate ways. Lando starred in projects like “The Untold Story” and “Paloma’s Flight,” and he performed a stint on “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
Seymour is shooting her second season of “Harry Wild” for Acorn TV, managed a turn in “B Positive” for CBS, and costarred in “The Kominsky Method” for Netflix. But when she first read the Christmas script she says she didn’t think of Lando as a costar. “I thought, ‘Joe’s my best friend.’ And I didn’t think of him being in it,” she says.
“I just thought, ‘I wonder what he thinks about what I'm about to do?’ And he read it, and he said, ‘Well, Jane, you're going to have so much fun on this one — this is one of the best Lifetime movies I’ve ever read.’ Then somebody got a really good idea and thought of offering it to Joe. And I'm so grateful.”
“I knew we could just be ourselves at times,” adds Lando. “And that’s what I really clicked down to this one and loved about it. And I think Jane felt the same way. We used some of our ‘chemistry,’” he says.
That chemistry is something indefinable, insists Lando. “Chemistry is something that you can’t manufacture and you can’t go, ‘Oh, that person looks like they’d be great with that person. ... It happens. And it’s happened with Jane. And I’ve had that opportunity with just a couple other people in my career. And I think that’s why we keep going back to that well of chemistry,” he says.
Seymour recalls, “I remember the first day I worked on ‘Dr. Quinn’ and had just come through a terrible circumstance and a terrible marriage and I'm looking at Joe, and I’m thinking, ‘No, that’ll NEVER happen.’
“And it’s 32 years later, and we’re reasonably inseparable. Joe and his family are always at my house. We are an entwined family — Joe and (his wife) Kirsten and I — we all get along really well. There’s just a chemistry. We have it and hopefully we always will and we’re also best friends. And there’s an excitement because you can act without a safety net because you know you can throw something out there and he’ll catch it, or I’ll catch it, and we’ll play with it.”
Seymour is thrilled with the variety of offers that keep rolling her way. “I love acting and I’ve been getting the most amazing roles. ... I think because I'm not trying to be an ingenue or very young or any of that — I can play my age to 85 — and comedy and drama. I love working and am so grateful to have such beautiful quality work and work with such great people.”
When “Dr. Quinn” came along, Seymour says she was in dire straits. Her ex had been her manager and she found herself in financial limbo. “I thought I was going to have to be bankrupt and really lost all sense of self-esteem and everything. I lost everything — I lost my homes, everything,” she recalls. So I totally understand people now who are losing their homes to the banks because I was THERE. It’s devastating.”
It was “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” that saved her. “I literally called my agent and said, ‘I need to work YESTERDAY.’ He said, ‘OK. That’s interesting.’ So he said, ‘Anything?’ I said, ‘Anything.’
“So he called all the networks and said, ‘Jane will do anything, but she’s got to do it NOW.’ And CBS said, ‘We’ve got this movie called “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” we don’t think it’ll make it as a series, but in case it does, we need her to sign for five years. She has to start tomorrow morning at 5 a.m.’
“That was it. I signed for a five-year deal with the understanding that it was never going to happen because it was a little movie they didn’t believe in anyway. I thought it was a beautiful script and loved the character. And 180 hours of ‘Dr. Quinn’ later, that’s when we quit.”
So what are the chances of another “Dr. Quinn” as a movie or limited series? “I would only do another ‘Dr. Quinn’ if it was going to be as good if not better,” says Seymour. “It’s got to be something really, really special, and I'm not quite sure how that happens. Also at the moment we haven’t found anyone who actually wants it so... .”
“I think Jane and I and a few other folks would be very on board if we found the script,” adds Lando. “And sadly the town we shot in burned down a couple years ago — completely to the ground — so it would be like starting new. Whatever we came up with would have to be something very different from what we saw before, but still keep the same parts and maybe I’d like to see these people get together and bond with one another in something that’s really inspirational. Hopefully that will come together soon; I still have to be able to jump on a horse.”
A rock star for the ages
He's the rock star for the ages. And he’s not Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie or Mick Jagger. No, he’s King Tut, that boy-king whose resplendent tomb was unearthed 100 years ago this month. There are all kinds of events celebrating that amazing discovery. PBS is presenting the special “Tutankhamun: Allies & Enemies,” on Nov. 23. The two-hour special plumbs the mysteries of the young pharoah’s life, the cultural revolution started by his father and the mystery surrounding his death at 19.
National Geographic unwraps the mummified history of the times with “Lost Treasures of Egypt” airing on Sundays.
Other tributes can be found on discovery+, Roku and several streamers.
Los Angeles is host an “immersive” experience in conjunction with National Geographic, a walk-through of multi-galleries tracing the life and death of the king through moving digital screenings. Titled “Beyond King Tut: the Immersive Experience,” tickets are available at www.beyondkingtut.com.
History writers haven’t forgotten that singular event either. John and Colleen Darnell’s book covers poor little Tut’s parents, Akhenaten and his beautiful wife, Nefertiti, in “Egypt’s Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti were Gods on Earth.”
And famed Egyptologist Dr. Bob Brier brings his latest tome, “Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World,” to press. Brier says covering such ancient maneuverings can be tricky. “The hardest thing about studying the ancients is to get inside their heads,” he says.
“Sometimes you get the monuments, jewels, but you forget the people behind it ... you continually look for little things to give you insight.”
Stallone opts for crime
He has portrayed his share of heroes on the big screen, but Sylvester Stallone says he’s always wanted to play a gangster. At last he’s earned that accolade with Paramount+ and the new series, “Tulsa King.” “It's always been kind of a fantasy since I was rejected to be one of the 200 extras who basically stood behind a wedding cake in ‘The Godfather’ scene in 1970,” he recalls.
“I'd been trying to get in gangster films, and it just never happened. So finally, everything comes to those who wait. ... Also, I wanted to play a different interpretation of a gangster, because most of the time, gangsters are ‘dems’ and ‘dose’ (kinds of guys.) “This is a fella who's very educated, reads Marcus Aurelius, reads Plato. He's into Machiavelli. He's also into the classics. He's a different animal that you would not normally see in a, quote, ‘gangster’ film.”
In “Tulsa King,” Stallone plays a racketeer just released from prison who has kept his trap shut about the mob’s dealings all those years and is shuffled off by the crime boss to Tulsa – not exactly the center of Organized Crime.
Stallone says he’s more comfortable with the ordinary Joe than he is with the muscular Adonis type he’s sometimes played. “I tend to identify more with those kinds of characters than the Teflon, steel-bodied superhero, which is kind of a mathematical format of filmmaking,” he says.
“The hero performs his super-deed. At the end he goes on to his next adventure. But at no time does it ever relate to any kind of humanity or human response.
“I've always looked at trying to overcome odds,” he continues. “And this character is put in a situation where he has to start over at a very late point in life. So there's a story there.”
The Waltons share Thanksgiving once more
The Walton Family has gathered once again, this time for a Thanksgiving special via the CW. “A Walton Thanksgiving” premieres on Sunday featuring a whole new cast.
The beloved original series, which ran on CBS for nine successful seasons, starred Richard Thomas as the oldest son, John Boy, and a cast of brilliant players that personified the struggling rural family caught in the clutch of the Depression.
This time Logan Shroyer plays John Boy and Bellamy Young portrays his mother. But Thomas will also be there, serving as narrator to the proceedings.
Thomas thinks the original proved so popular because it was about everyday people. “It honored the lives of people that were not — at least on the surface — exceptional,” he says.
“They weren't powerful lawyers or doctors or cops or sexy young people or sexy old people. It wasn’t geared in that respect to the marketplace. So people felt their own, less romantic and simpler lives honored in a way that they didn’t anywhere else.
“And I think they responded to that a lot. That was also a show in which a husband and wife equally raised the family. ... The mother, grandmother ... those women were strong and wise as well as foolish and frail. So you had something for everyone in the family. And you had something very rare in this country: respect and veneration for the elderly. You had people who were 6 years old and 80 years old and not a cynical view of either age or youth, although a lot of flaws and foolishness of age and youth was portrayed.”
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