From 1993 to 1998, Jane Seymour and Joe Lando shared the small screen Dr. Quinn, the Medicine Ladythe beloved CBS Western channel. It was pretty clear that sparks were there — they briefly dated while shooting the pilot — but the two quickly realized they were meant to be lifelong friends and have remained that way, for better or worse, throughout the years. In 2022, they reunited for a Lifetime movie Spark of Christmaswhich became one of the network’s highest-rated holiday films.
Lando, 63, shared his home in Pacific Palisades with his wife, three children, a daughter-in-law, two dogs (a German shepherd named Beau and a Border Collie named Rosie) and two parrots. Like Lando, Seymour, 73, who lives not too far away in Malibu, was evacuated because of the fires. She was raised by a family friend in Calabasas who happened to share her ex-husband. “We raised our children together,” she says. “We’ve been friends since the beginning, which people never believe, but it’s true.”
Thank God her house is still standing. But Lando is no longer there. usually a private man, He shared his grief and loss For the home he lovingly cared for for years on Instagram. Lando is now processing the shock of losing everything while trying to maneuver the red tape of filing FEMA reports and insurance. Seymour and her boyfriend, musician John Zampetti, welcomed the Landau family and the zoo into their home.
“Everyone is doing great,” Lando says of his brood. “The dogs seem confused about what’s going on. We haven’t had the chance to take them back to our house and tell them there’s no longer a home to go back to. But I think they need to know more about the place, because they’ll be waiting to come back.
Seymour spoke to Hollywood Reporter About the experience of being there for the Landos in their time of greatest need.
While Joe and I have always been close, it’s clear that we are now very close. We live together, we cook together, we empathize together. When all this happened I immediately said: “Joe, come here.” And they did. He has a very large family – four children, one of whom has a wife, two dogs, two parrots and him and his wife. But I know they are comfortable here. They have been here many times and know the house well.
He’s always been Joe – just like his character Dr. Quinn – He runs up and says, “I can fix this. This needs to be fixed, Gene. I can do this. This is who he is and where he comes from. He’s been a cook for a long time. He’s got a little propane stove for camping. And we don’t have gas in the house right now.” So he set up a small kitchen outside.
Through it all, we realized how much we love each other and how we always come together for each other. They have always been there for me. I know how I felt when I walked out of my house on countless occasions where I thought, “Well, that’s it. We’ve lost everything.” And I have to put all the last-minute random things I can into bags. And now here I am with everything. And they literally had nothing. They had the clothes on their backs. They thought maybe they would be gone for a day or two.
The incredible generosity of people – everyone I knew was sending clothes and buying things. My housekeeper just went and bought a t-shirt for Joe and a tracksuit for him [his wife] Kirsten. At least the person I know literally immediately came up with the thing that put a smile on their face. And it wasn’t random clothes. She’s shopped for them, knows exactly what works for them, what they want, and what they want. Joe just started crying. My partner John is allergic to dogs, but we have become a dog collector. They come directly to him.
But there is an amazing increase in this – how close we all are and how grateful we feel to be able to help each other. His family was always there to help me. There is such a huge amount of love between our families.
Joe and I met Dr. Quinn, the Medicine LadyThat is, 34 years ago. We were together [romantically] Very briefly when we did the pilot and then we broke up, and then they went on with our show. It was difficult times at times, but there was always a bond between us. After the show, we became really close friends again. So do I, along with his wife, Kirsten, and his children. And I have always kept my home open for their families, always, no matter the disasters. Our children have all grown up together. His kids are a little younger than mine, but I think his kids definitely grew up wearing a lot of my son’s clothes.
I’m about to start doing some sort of work on a resume. And I was looking at my collection, just mountains of memorabilia Dr. Quinn It’s back in the day and everything. I have everything here. I kept thinking: “What do I do with all this?” Finding these pictures, looking at these old letters that people wrote, things I wrote about how I was feeling when I was going through big things in my life. And I was looking at all this and just thinking, “This is what you’re going to lose.” But what you don’t lose are your memories and feelings towards people.
With all the crises that happen in the world, sometimes when something catastrophic like this happens, you start to see who people really are and what they find they are capable of even when they themselves are suffering. And that’s what gives me hope in the world, because at the end of the day, we’re all human beings on this tiny speck in the universe.
My mother spent three and a half years in a Japanese camp in Indonesia [in World War 2]And she couldn’t talk about it. She pushed away the bad things, divided them up, and didn’t talk about them. But nowadays, oh my god, my house was full of people all the time. We used to call them “roads and strays,” but it didn’t have to be a fire for our home to become a hub for everything we could do to share. That was normal in my house.
And I still think my mother was right. “The way you heal is to open your heart and reach out to help someone else,” she said. “If you have purpose, you can love yourself and you can move forward in life. You don’t have to look very far to find someone worse off than you are.”
