Jane Seymour – Franklin and Bash

By starrymag | March 20, 2014

Q) I was wondering there’s a kiss between you and Heather on this episode coming up and she had mentioned to us that the idea was brought to her. How did it come to you?

A) Well I got a phone call from the executive producer and one of the major writers on the show – one of the co-creators Bill Chase and he said, “Jane how would like to come back and be Peter’s mom again, only this time you’d be a sex surrogate and you get to kiss Heather Locklear?” So that was how the whole thing was pitched to me. And I said what is the context and then, of course, he sent me the script, it was hysterically funny and I said absolutely. This is good. So, yes it’s the first time I’ve ever had to do that. It was interesting and surprising.

Q) How much research did you do into sex surrogacy to be a part of this role?

A) Not a lot. No, I saw Helen Hunt’s movie – a great movie, yes. So in terms of a serious movie about it, I think it’s pretty amazing and obviously these people do exist and this is a career path that many people take and I believe that sex surrogates really help people a lot. So it was interesting playing the character and, of course, in her case it’s kind of a legal case because she’s being tried as a prostitute and she’s saying, no she’s not a prostitute, she’s a sex surrogate and that sex surrogates don’t have sex with all their clients.

Q) What did you find the most challenging coming back this time?

A) Well, it was a big role. This time they wrote me a really, really great role. Challenging? I think when you do comedy but it’s also dealing with something that’s serious, which is slightly the case in this one, you have to realize that you actually have to be credible. It has to be real. You have to be understood as being real and at the same time it’s comedic. People have to care about you and the circumstance you’re in and so it’s sort of the balance was interesting to see how much comedy I could play and at the same time how much I had to make sure that people would actually believe this was a real circumstance and that she had real feelings.

Q) And is there like a particular moment or something that you’re looking forward to the fans seeing in the episode that you can talk about?

A) I haven’t seen it put together yet, but I was told that the network considered it one of the best episodes, so I’ve been told it’s really funny and really a good episode and I’m sure the fans are going to be interested in seeing me kiss Heather Locklear.

Q) So what was it like kissing Heather Locklear?

A) Surprisingly not as embarrassing as I thought. Obviously she’s a great professional and the circumstances in the scene made it very funny, so it was very amusing to do. Yes.

Q) Was she a good kisser?

A) Ah, definitely yes. I think she was a little surprised by the kiss as the character.

Q) How did the producers approach you about it?

A) They literally picked up the phone a few weeks earlier and said we’re writing this episode for you and we want to know how do you feel about kissing (Heather Locklear) and playing a sex surrogate? And I went what? And, you know, I know them they write great material. It’s a wonderful show and I said send me the script and let me see all the breakdown of the story and let me see how it works in and I read it and I just said oh this is terrific. That’s why I did it.

Q) What was like your most memorable moment from the set this time around?

A) It’s really fun when you’ve already worked with the guys to come back because now they were really writing for me and we all know each other and we know how to work together and – it was a lot of fun because it was a much bigger role than I’d had before.

Q) So this is your second time on the show with this character and now that you’ve gone to spend a little more time with her, how do you describe her?

A) Well, she always surprises you. You never know what her next career choice might be. And in this case she suddenly decided that she was going to become a sex surrogate, which of course is very frightening to her son. The whole idea of her mother having sex at all was of course frightening to him, but the idea of her doing this as a paid surrogate is just more than he can handle. And needless to say, his sidekick teases him horribly about it. But it’s really fun, the producers really know me now and we get along really well and they know what I’m capable of and so they keep pushing the envelope I think. They want me to come back again next year, but I have no idea what Colleen Bash will be up to next year. No doubt she will have found another career since I’m not sure how well she got along with the sex surrogacy, especially since she did end up in jail and in court.

Q) Can you tell me what it was like working with Breckin and Mark-Paul?

A) It’s hysterical and they just never stop cracking jokes the whole time. You’re never sure whether they’re on camera or off camera or if they’re even going to stop cracking the jokes and doing the pranks. When they say rolling action it could continue into the scene for all you know. So it’s very different from working with anyone else and the two of them are very funny together and I think that’s why the show is so successful.

Q) I was curious you talked a lot about your scenes with Heather Locklear. Can you talk specifically about kind of your scenes with Franklin & Bash in the episode?

A) Well they don’t want me to give the whole story away, but basically it is brought to their attention that Peter’s mother Colleen, my character, is in jail and needs to be taken out and that she’s been charged with prostitution. And when they come to meet me, I’m in jail with a lot of real prostitutes and I’m basically claiming that it’s a big mistake, I’m not a prostitute, I’m just a sex surrogate. So then there is a major court case because I’m trying to prove that I’m not a prostitute.

Q) You had some sort of career resurgence with comedy. Can you talk a little about whether you prefer comedy or drama and what led you into doing comedy?

A) Well I used to do comedy in the theatre when I was younger and on “Dr. Quinn” once in a while they’d let me do a little comedy. I’ve always loved comedy, but I think people didn’t look at me and go, oh she’s a comedian until I did Wedding Crashers. And then it was as if I had a whole new career and then people looked at me quite differently and he went, oh my God. So I have played an enormous number of way-out characters and I thoroughly enjoy it so I think certainly at my age right now laughing at oneself and playing this kind of character is a great thing to do. But I love playing the serious stuff too – that’s what I’ve done my whole life, but I would say sinceWedding Crashers, I’ve probably mostly done comedy. I played such different characters each time and I’ve been having a lot of fun with different kind of looks and accents and characters and I think some actresses get to play themselves their whole life and actors – and I definitely don’t. I get to play ever ultra-ego I could ever imagine.

Q) What else do you have coming up?

A) Good question. I have Sage Paints the Sky – it’s the American Doll movie for the new dolls called Sage and I play the grandmother. And that’s coming out on DVD on the 2nd of July and it will be on television on the, I think 16th or 17th of July, but it’s a terrific lovely movie, for obviously a younger audience, about a very inspirational grandmother who’s an artist and also rides dressage. It’s about this little girl who discovers that when she goes back to school that not only has the finances for her school arts program being cut, so she’s not going to have art in the school, but that her best friend over the summer has made friends with another girl and so she feels very left out. So it’s an inspirational story between a grandmother and a young girl and it takes place in Santa Fe and it’s quite lovely. A lot of singing and dancing and art and horseback riding and it’s really sweet. And then I also have a movie called Austenland, which is a feature film that’s coming out in August. It’s certainly in New York and LA – I’m not sure what the rest of the release pattern is. It stars Keri Russell and oh gosh, I’m trying to remember all the different who are in it. It’s basically about these women who are obsessed with Jane Austen and they go to this retreat called Austenland, which I run and I’m this really awful English woman who runs the place where you come there and you get rid of all your modern things and you become a Jane Austen character and basically you live there and somebody falls in love with you and you have full emotion in the Austen experience. It was made by Jerusha Hess who did, of course,Napoleon Dynamite, so it’s very quirky and very funny and it also is produced by Stephanie Meyer. I’m doing so many different things. I mean “Franklin & Bash” as a sex surrogate, then I’ve got the quintessential American Doll girl inspirational piece as a grandmother with a grey wig, and then I get to play this really nasty piece of English pertinaciousness in Austenland. There’s another movie called Jake Squared. I haven’t seen that yet, but someone told me that was pretty good too. I’m in that. Sometimes I do small roles in things that are quite good.

Q) Which role do you enjoy playing the most?

A) I enjoy them all. I’ve been given lots of character roles recently, which has been really fun and it’s nice to be able to play everything from musical comedy – I did a musical for ABC Family called Love Struck the Musical. That was really fun. I played it in a blonde wig and I had to sing and dance to Lady Gaga and pretend that I was Chelsea Kane. That was really fun. And then go straight into something with a grey wig where I’m a grandmother and I’m – suddenly I’m on a walker. And then I’m a sex surrogate who’s kissing Heather Locklear. And then of course I’m back in England doing my English thing. I’ve just done another movie in England called The Unknown Heart, so that will come out at some point too, but it’s quite fun, especially when I go back to England and I have to remember how to speak English.

Q) Have you forgotten how to do it?

A) Well when I’m in America I end to get slightly American because I usually play Americans. Obviously I’m playing American in “Franklin & Bash,” but when I go back to England they want me to be very upper class proper comedic English.

Q) Did you think back when you were a teenager and starting out that your career would be going this way at this stage in your life?

A) Never imagined I’d have the career I have at all. I was just hoping to be a dancer in the chorus. I just have had the most fortunate career and sometimes I forget how much I’ve done and then I look on the website and I look at how many different things I’ve done and I’ve completely forgotten that I’ve done it all. But different phases in my life I’ve really done everything. I got to be the ingénue, I got to be the leading lady, I got to be the victim, I got to be the evil person, do the sexy stuff, do the comedy, do the tragedy and play all kinds of real people like everything from Marie Antoinette to Maria Callas and Marie Antoinette and Hazel Brannon Smith. So personally right now I feel that I’m hitting my stride and I think now is when I really feel I can do my best work, but as we know they don’t have that much material for people my age, so hopefully they’ll be something good coming up.

Q) And you also do a lot of stuff other than acting. You’re an artist and you do charity work and you have the open heart jewelry line. Can you tell us a little bit about your other non-acting projects?

A) Well, it’s pretty huge. I’ve been painting now for gosh, twenty-two years I’ve been painting pretty seriously and showing for at least twenty. I do about 12 to 14 one woman art shows all over the country and also in Canada. I’ve been an official artist for the Olympics three times and shown in major museums and things. So that’s a pretty serious part of my life. And I also, from that, I created the open heart which I trademarked and now it’s a major jewelry line with Kay Jewelers and Jared’s and what’s really exciting is I always come up with new concepts and new designs and new philosophies behind it, but we really basically, the Open Heart Foundation, which is our foundation, is now in its third year and what we do is we single out people who have taken a challenge in life and turned it into an opportunity to help others and we honor them and then benefit their charities. If anyone wants to see the other things I’m doing just so people know,http://www.janeseymour.com has everything including what my kids are doing. My son’s in a rock group and my daughter’s a comedy writer and something that I’m in as well. My other son’s a great fine art photographer and everything about Open Heart Foundation and the charitable things they’re all in there and also my furniture design and the artwork and the jewelry. So it’s all there.

*CONFERENCE CALL*