Trivia / Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

• California Doubling: The show was filmed at the Paramount Ranch in California, where the landscape isn't particularly like Colorado Springs at all, while the second TV movie was filmed in Montreal, despite being set in Boston.
• Dawson Casting: Jane Seymour was 42 when she began playing the role, but Dr. Mike is established as being in her mid-30's.
• Executive Meddling: The darker tone during the last season is said to have been in response to the network not liking that the show's primary demographics had fallen out of the coveted 18-40 range.
• Fake American:
  • Jane Seymour is British and plays an American woman. It's not exactly clear whether Quinn's accent is supposed to be some version of upper-class Bostonian; her family talks roughly the same way.
  • Cloud Dancing, a Cheyenne shaman, is played by Osage/Cherokee and Lakota actor Larry Sellers.
• Killed by Request: Almost. Joe Lando wanted to leave after the 5th season, so it was planned that Sully would die falling down from a cliff. But a massive backlash from the fans made it necessary for everybody to re-think this decision. So in the end, Sully survived. But to make a compromise with Joe Lando, he was free to only appear in half of the episodes in the 6th season (which also turned out to be the show's last).
• Money, Dear Boy: Jane Seymour took the pilot because she'd just gone through a divorce and was left "homeless and penniless". Because of the success of Wedding Crashers, she had a sitcom being written for her by Paramount, and took this thinking it would be an interim project that wouldn't catch on.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The show was the butt of many Sickeningly Sweet jokes from The Simpsons, David Letterman, and MAD, among others, including French and Saunders when the series aired in the UK. The showrunners loved such ribbing because it only made people want to watch the show even more.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Midway through the show, actress Erika Flores was replaced by Jessica Bowman as Colleen. Apparently, Flores had a contract dispute. Due to a difference between production order and airing order, the old actor reappears in one story after the new one takes her place.
  • Several actors were swapped out after the pilot, including Colm Meaney as Jake Slicker.
  • Michaela's mother Elizabeth was originally played by Jane Wyman in her last acting role (she retired afterward). Wyman was recast with Georgann Johnson, who played the character for the remainder of the series.
  • Teresa was played by Michelle Bonilla in Season 5, Alex Meneses in Season 6.
• Promoted Fanboy: When Fred Rogers mentioned in an interview that Dr. Quinn was one of the few TV shows he enjoyed watching, the producers arranged for him to become a Guest Star. He played the role of "Reverend Thomas", his only on-camera appearance as a fictional human character.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Kid Cole and Sister Ruth, played by real-life spouses June and Johnny Cash.
  • Loren and Marjorie, also played by real-life spouses Orson Bean and Alley Mills.
• Written-In Infirmity: Jane Seymour's pregnancy resulted in Dr. Mike becoming pregnant too. Perfect timing, as she and Sully had just married. (Unlike Jane, however, Mike did not have twins.)
• You Look Familiar:
  • John Schneider had a guest role in the first season as a fugitive bank robber before being cast years later as Sully's best friend/new sheriff Daniel. (This led in turn to a case of I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine when Seymour became a recurring character in season 4 of Smallville.)
  • James Leland Adams played General George Custer in several episodes before being cast as the pompous Preston A. Lodge III, switching to a short-haired clean-shaven look from Custer's long hair and beard.
  • Brandon Douglas played a con artist before being cast as neophyte physician Andrew Cook.
  • Alley Mills can be glimpsed as one of Hank's prostitutes shortly before playing Mike's sister Marjorie.
  • Black Hawk, the Cheyenne beside Chief Black Kettle in the pilot movie, was retooled into Cloud Dancing after CBS greenlit the production of a full series. The differences are that Cloud Dancing can speak English whereas Black Hawk could not, and Cloud Dancing had a much more prominent role in the show as opposed to Black Hawk being just another face in the crowd of extras.