“It would have been nice to have a bible,” she added. “I usually like to work that way, but Chuck doesn't, and I think he's doing just fine so he shouldn't stop what he's doing. It's exciting when everyone gets the next script and you go, ‘That's what's happening?’ It's a little bit like life; you never know where you going to be from one moment to the next and you can't plan the future.”
In season two of the series, Arkin’s Norman Newlander character encounters Madelyn (Seymour), whom he dated some 50 years ago, at a funeral they both attend. With both characters having lost their companions, old sparks are reignited. Seymour found the idea of revisited love interesting, along with getting to play closer to her age for the first time. “I think once you've loved someone, even if it doesn't last forever the good part that was there initially is still there,” she reflected. “You may not like the person, or be suited to be together, but often having that kind of intense experience with someone, no one can take away those feelings and memories.
“I'm hoping people embrace my new look with the gray hair,” she added. “It's very different for me, and exciting because people often say, ‘You can't play your own age.’ Well, now I can, plus a few years!”
Looking at Seymour’s extensive career, one that runs the gamut of genres from sci-fi to westerns to comedy, you might assume she was blessed with an astute intuition for picking projects. She doesn’t see it that way. “Hopefully, it's something to do with being able to do the job,” she admitted. “And being incredibly fortunate. I’ve been everything from the ingénue to the romantic lead to the victim to evil. I've always been a character actress, but after doing [the 2005 feature film] Wedding Crashers everything turned. Of late I've been doing a lot of comedy. Always playing the leading lady was great, but it's more fun to play everything.”
Seymour tells me when she's often recognized for many of her previous roles, including the CBS classic Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, as well as the miniseries East of Eden(1981), The Scarlet Pimpernel(1982) and War and Remembrance (1988). “After doing so many miniseries’ I was dubbed ‘The Queen of the Miniseries’ for a while,” she laughed. “But I think I killed that off, and not in a good way, when I did the 32-hour version of Remembrance. But if you look at what's happening with streaming services now, they are all basically miniseries, so I'm back!”