For Jane Seymour Striving For Perfection Can be Murder
Jane Seymour sees herself as the kind of girl who can do it all.
“I am definitely a multi-tasker,” the beloved “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” star declares. “I’m pretty resourceful and I’m a problem solver. I see things that aren’t working and I invariably come up with solutions. Also, my life is go, go, go all the time, but I’m actually very good at finding balance.”
The same can be said for the new character Seymour is playing, Prudence McCoy, in “Dear Prudence,” a mystery movie that premieres at 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Aug. 23, on Hallmark Channel.
Prudence is a Martha Stewart-type personality known far and wide for her handy household/lifestyle tips. She can tell you how, for example, to keep your houseplants watered while you’re out of town (using twine, a brick and a bucket of water) or how to relieve a nasty case of razor burn (oatmeal does the trick).
Prudence is also an amateur sleuth who, using these same common-sense techniques, can unravel a murder mystery with the best of them.
Suffice it to say that “Dear Prudence” is unlike most grim, gritty crime dramas on that litter the airwaves. “None of this aggressive police authority stuff from Prudence,” Seymour notes. “Just good old-fashioned common sense.”
Which is why, she believes, viewers will see “Prudence” as a refreshing change. “I think people are going to get into the spirit of, ‘Oh, my god, I didn’t know shaving foam takes blood out of carpet!’”
Seymour says there’s a lot of her in Prudence and a lot of Prudence in her. She worked closely with screenwriter Rob Gilmer, in fact, before the camera started rolling and “we tailored it in many ways to who I am.”
Like her character, she says, even when confusion is swirling all around her, the actress usually manages to maintain a level head. “For example, there is a chaotic mess at the moment in my bathroom,” Seymour says. “But in amongst that chaos is the next three days of what I have to do to get my work done. I’ve figured it out and worked it out and it’s all there, but only I can really make any sense of it and it all gets done somehow.”
But the comparisons go only so far, mind you. As a girl, Seymour recalls, she was fond of reading Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries, but she admits she rarely, if ever, beat Marple to the solution. Simple put, Seymour’s skill set doesn’t include being an armchair detective.
So even though she sees herself as a problem-solver, she absolutely would not try her hand at amateur crime solving. She would, instead, call in the experts. “There are times in life when I look at things and I go, ‘OK, I can fix that,” she says. “But when I can’t, I find somebody who knows how to do it.”