Following a new trail
Jane Seymour goes from ‘Medicine’ to mystery in ‘Harry Wild’
Jane Seymour couldn’t have predicted what twists her return to series television with the weekly murder mystery “Harry Wild” would require.
But the “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” veteran, 70, proved to be if not indestructible then a prime exponent of the actor’s motto: The show must go on.
Seymour’s Harriet “Harry” Wild is a retired English professor suddenly finding purpose as a crime solver, much to the consternation of her police detective son.
“I read the script and couldn’t put it down. It was a murder mystery — and I had no idea how to solve it till the last minute,” Seymour said in a Zoom interview.
“I love that she was an academic with such a passion for being a professor of English but was not going to waste the rest of her life teaching kids that just wanted to get high.
“She reinvents herself and accidentally ends up sleuthing because she has knowledge of English literature. When she sees something (a literary clue in a homicide case), that rings a bell. Nobody, including of course her son, a detective, will believe her.”
Recently mugged, Harry “realizes she might need a level of protection. She gets a stun gun to defend herself ” and teams up “with this young 15-year-old kid who’s on the other side of the track, who’s never been exposed to literature. It’s just a wonderful team — a woman in her late 60s and a kid whose father’s a professional criminal and an addict. Together we see how they have the knowledge to solve these very bizarre mysteries.”
Not bizarre but truly terrible was what happened filming in Ireland.
“I’m in every single scene. And then I smashed my kneecap — shattered my patella — in real life in the second week. I went running and I went splat, and they got it all on camera.
“My face was saved. Of course, idiot that I am, I didn’t realize how bad it was.
I was in pain but I saw that my co-star that day was a 45year-old young man with Downs syndrome who was completely prepped by his much older mother to be able to just do that scene.
“I thought, ‘I can’t let him not do that.’ So they carried me to the scene. Then they carried me to the next.”
Viewers will never see Seymour was wearing a knee brace and had crutches “except for the moments when I was filmed. But the whole crew were behind me! They could not believe that I didn’t cancel the show. They were just like my team.”
AcornTV’s “Harry Wild” series premieres with two episodes Monday, and follows with two new episodes each week.