WOW: "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" was a defining role for you. Do you miss the show? Do you see parts of Dr. Quinn in roles you’ve played since – like Prudence McCoy, perhaps?

JANE: Playing Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was an extraordinary experience, especially at the time that I was given that role. I was going through a tough time in my life. I had been through a terrible divorce, I’d lost all my money and this really was the show that saved me and put me back on my feet. At the time, I never wanted to do a series so it was really a question of me asking the networks and basically telling them that I’d do anything and that’s when Dr. Quinn came about. She was a wonderful character and the love story between Sully and Michaela was terrific to play. Of course, Joe Lando was about as hot as they get, so that didn’t hurt. I loved all the story lines with the Native Americans. I just found that terrific. I think every time I did a Dr. Quinn, I learned something more about American history, so on a personal level that was exciting. We had wonderful actors on it and the scripts were well written, so when I first heard I was gong to be doing a series I was a little concerned about being tied up doing the same character for such a long time. But I think that Dr. Quinn was so well written and the character so developed and there was a different feeling about it each episode. Sometimes they were very tragic, sometimes they were romantic, sometimes they were funny and I really liked that about the series. Is she like Prudence McCoy? I never think of it that way, but I suppose elements of myself are in both characters, so there has to be some cross-reference there. Of course, Prudence does not have a specific love interest at this point in her life and I guess she had some problems with her mother. I suppose she has that in common with Michaela Quinn. Prudence doesn’t have children at the moment, but I think it may be a bit late for her to have children. Prudence cares about people; so does Dr. Quinn. But as we can clearly see Prudence lives in this century, not the last.

WOW: Your mother cared for fellow prisoners in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II, she worked heroically with little medicine and using only her Red Cross training. Did this influence you? Is that something that led you to play a doctor on television?

JANE: My mother was in a concentration camp in World War II in Indonesia. She used what little Red Cross training she had and no medication to nurse those who were sick. This is what I grew up with. That, and of course my father was a doctor so I think it made perfect sense that I would end up being in a doctor show. Actually, from the time I was about five or six – maybe even younger – my sisters and I used to go and work at the hospital as auxiliary nurses. We used to help the nurses make cotton-ball swabs for operations, cut gauze squares for surgeries, sometimes help look after newborn babies, especially the ones in the preemie ward. I had a microscope when I was seven and I was watching surgeries by the time I was ten. To me, all of this was quite normal, but of course clearly it wasn’t. I think all of that really helped. It helped me when I played a doctor because I was around doctors and nurses my whole childhood.