May may be the month of Mother’s Day, the Kentucky Derby, Cinco de Mayo and even Mother Goose Day, but over at Acorn TV it’s time for murder most foul.

The good news is that Jane Seymour is back running the Wild/Reid Detective Agency with her partner (Rohan Nedd) on the hit series “Harry Wild.” This season the pair is up to their ears in puzzling cases including one involving a nun.

But that’s not all ... on June 2 Seymour will be hosting a whole new kind of mystery with “Relative Secrets,” an unscripted venture described as “part true-crime and part genealogy.”

Each episode will probe an American family’s darkest-held mystery, hoping to solve the mystery and reconnoiter with the family.

The four-parter will include the saga of a mother who abandoned her children for a new life, a World War II vet who feels he contributed to his grandmother’s death, and the daughter of a serial killer trying to carve out her own destiny.

These two series mark another coup for Seymour, who’s best known for her six seasons as "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” her stint on the Netflix comedy, “The Kominsky Method,” and the evergreen movie, “Somewhere in Time.”

“I don’t just like acting,” she says, “I LOVE acting. I’d almost pay for the privilege and sometimes some of the movies I’ve been in, have actually cost me to do,” she says.

“I like creating the character and putting myself into the circumstances of different people — whether it’s comedic or romantic or it’s tragic. I just love experiencing what life would be like if I were that person.”

Originally, the British-born actress planned on being a dancer. “I wanted to be a ballerina; I loved ballet more than anything in the world, and I had to quit that when I was 16 because I had injuries,” she recalls.

Her ballet school also included drama classes, but Seymour was not as adept there. “I remember they wouldn’t cast me in ANYTHING. I always had the worst role, like two lines in whatever it was. It was very frustrating for me because they didn’t really give me a chance. It wasn’t till I left school and auditioned and started working as a chorus girl in ‘Oh! What a Lovely War,’ and I had one line.”

But things were not so comfortable on the home front. “My parents insisted I become a dance teacher, and I went against their better judgment and said, ‘No, I want to become an actress.’ That’s the first time I really stood up to them and said, ‘I know you invested all your money in me as a dancer, but I'm going to try this.’ I know at the time they thought it was a big mistake.”

Though she recited only one line in “Oh! What a Lovely War,” she was spotted by a top talent agent. “And I auditioned for a bunch of things, got a TV series in England called ‘The Onedin Line,’ and I just took to acting. It was something I loved doing.”

Still, Seymour didn’t trek the usual path to acting via a prestigious drama school and waiting tables in her spare time.

“While I was still there at (ballet) school, (producer-director) Franco Zeffirelli wanted to meet me for a movie he was going to make after ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ He was going to make ‘Roman Holiday.’ I tested for him and for Fred Zinnemann at the same time. He was going to make ‘The Dybbuk’ which never got made.”

The role was described as a young girl who was possessed by the devil. “And they wanted me to be able to lower my voice to a male register, so I had lessons with the greatest voice coach in England — I think her name was Cicely Barry. And she did all the voice coaching for the Royal Shakespeare Company, so really by accident, I got a great education in acting whilst performing.”

Seymour went on to appear in the classics: Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen. “That was really my training as an actor. It wasn’t what I thought I wanted to be.”

At 25 she left her native land to try her luck in America. “Without a work permit, without a visa, without an agent, without everything,” she says.

“I gave myself six weeks to make it, so I think that was pretty pivotal. When you look at my resume, you'll see a few years where I worked literally nonstop. I went to an immigration lawyer who said the only way I could get a green card was to work consistently for a year and was at least nominated for a major acting award. So I took him seriously and did every job I could possibly get and worked consistently for a year and was nominated for an Emmy. So that’s how it happened.”

McDonough plays the good guy

Neal McDonough, who made a venomous villain in projects like “Walking Tall,” “Tulsa King,” “Yellowstone” and “Justified,” is back this time as a hero in “The Last Rodeo” opening in theaters May 23.

McDonough plays a retired rodeo legend who needs money to save his grandson. Against all objections, he decides to enter the bull-riding contest as the oldest rider ever.

Like his character, McDonough is used to bucking the odds, he tells me.

“I happened to be the youngest of six kids and all the other five happened to be phenomenal at everything — great athletes, great scholars, great speakers, great everything. So I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and I really wasn’t sure.

“My freshman year in high school I was failing every class. Nothing was working for me, then I auditioned for this play, ‘You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown,’ and I played Snoopy. And that first night on stage — it was really just working the character and doing something I’d never exposed myself to,” he remembers.

“I'd tried out for plays in first, second, third, fourth, through the eighth grade, and they all said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then I got ‘You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ and everyone was ‘Well, of course, look at you! You're perfect for this kind of stuff.’ From then on in, I just loved it.”

But the white-haired actor had trouble getting started. “My first few years out here it was kind of like the first grade, second, grade, third grade – ‘No, you're too Irish. You're too Nordic. You're too this or whatever.’ I dyed my hair black for years and figured that would help. And that certainly didn’t work. And finally things started to cook with ‘Band of Brothers,’ and I was the luckiest guy in the world.”

Heaton cast as a nun

Folks who remember Patricia Heaton as the sassy wife in “Everybody Loves Raymond,” will be surprised to see her as the Mother Superior in the movie “The Ritual.” The film, which is based on real events, opens in theaters June 6.

“The Ritual” chronicles the tale of two Catholic priests who drive the evil from a woman possessed by a demon. The actual exorcism took place in 1928, and Dan Stevens and Al Pacino portray the clerics who succeeded in cleansing the woman of the curse.

Heaton tells me that her mother died when she was 12, and since she’s always been self-reliant. “I'm an independent person anyway, and then when my mom died, I really got a sense I was on my own. And I’ve always felt not lonely but alone,” she says.

“Ultimately, you're alone. It’s up to you. So I think that’s really — alone except for God. You strip it down, that’s it and it’s your responsibility. I think that’s what keeps me moving along.”

Heaton struggled unsuccessfully for nine years in New York before she came to Los Angeles to find employment. “My advice to actors is it’s important to always keep working and create your own opportunity for work, and you really should get together with people and do play readings and do your own production of things. I think it’s important to have that control, so it doesn’t all become about getting a job. Because then you lose your perspective about the craft you're supposed to be honing. And it becomes about getting an agent or something. And I think you have to balance those things.”

Moore stars in comedy and thriller

Julianne Moore has found her way to dark comedy with “Sirens” premiering on Netflix May 22. And on June 13 she materializes in a nail-biting thriller, “Echo Valley,” on Apple TV+. And while we’ve seen Moore in dozens of prestigious projects like “Far from Heaven,” “Boogie Nights,” “Still Alice” and “Game Change,” she tells me it was rough going when she started out.

“You have to audition constantly, and you really think, in a way, your naivete saves you because you think there’s a chance when you go in to read for a casting director that you might get the part,” she laughs.

“You don’t know that you're going to have to come back four times for her, another four times for a director. You don’t know, you think it might happen in one or two steps or something. That’s probably the toughest when you keep doing those kinds of things. I was fortunate because the first job I had was on a soap opera. (The soap opera was “As the World Turns.”)

“I’d been in the city for about a year and a half and worked in the theater and as a waitress and stuff like that. When I got this soap opera job, the fact that I could actually support myself was really astonishing. It really is such a slow process. First, you're happy you get an audition then you're happy you get a call-back, then you're happy you almost got the job.”

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