Over the course of six seasons, 1990s TV viewers fell in love with “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
Airing from 1993 until 1998, the series followed the exploits of physician Dr. Michaela Quinn, who leaves her home in Boston to start a new life in the Old West in the years following the Civil War.
During the series’ run, fans watched romance blossom between the titular Dr. Quinn and Byron Sully, a rough-around-the-edges and ruggedly handsome mountain man.
Now, the actors behind those iconic characters are revealing that the love affair that took place onscreen reflected a very real secret romance between them when the cameras stopped rolling.
‘We Really Fell in Love’
During the recent 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” stars Jane Seymour (who played Michaela Quinn) and Joe Lando (Byron Sully) reunited for a panel to share their memories of the beloved frontier drama.
According to Seymour, 75, her attraction to Lando, 64, was instantaneous the minute she laid eyes on him.
“My feeling was I saw him and I went, ‘Oh my God, I’ve not seen a man that looks that gorgeous as long as I can maybe ever remember except, you know, as an imaginary, you know, romance song or something,’” she recalled, via People.
And while Lando quickly became her character’s love interest, life imitated art behind the scenes.
“We really fell in love,” she shared.
“That’s a secret,” she said, adding, “It’s not a secret, is it anymore?”
It Didn’t Last Long
During the panel, the former co-stars revealed that one of their first days together on the set found them forming a tight bond when a flash flood sent them scrambling, with Seymour joining Lando in his pickup truck to escape the rising water.
“We got out of there and it was like the craziest thing ever,” Seymour said, revealing that after making their escape they enjoyed a Mexican meal and a few margaritas.
“And it took us like $5, and then we realized that, you know, we had actually fallen in love,” she recalled.
“So everything you saw on ‘Dr. Quinn,’ certainly in the pilot [was real],” she confirmed.
Their offscreen love affair, however, didn’t last nearly as long as the one viewers witnessed on the show, with Seymour revealing that they broke things off shortly after they first got together.
“We realized that Joe really needed to — he had a plan,” Seymour explained.
“He had a, was it a four-child white picket fence [plan]? And a younger wife plan,” said Seymour, referencing the near-decade difference in their ages.
Besides, she added, by then she already had children, “and I was older and I was never gonna be able to have [more] kids.”
However, that prediction proved to be wrong when Seymour would later become pregnant. “But I showed him — I had twins,” she quipped.
Like ‘An Old Married Couple’
In a previous interview with People, Seymour and Lando opened up about the tight bond they developed while starring in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
“We’re kind of like an old married couple,” Lando said..
“We actually can finish one another’s sentences,” Seymour added. “We could predict what one another’s going to get upset about.”
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Iconic ’90s Co-Stars Reveal They ‘Really Fell In Love’ In Secret As Onscreen Romance Simmered