Jane Seymour Says Owen Wilson Made ‘Wedding Crashers’ Nude Scene ‘Even Funnier’ (Exclusive)

Twenty years after raising eyebrows — and getting big laughs — with her saucy almost-nude scene in Wedding Crashers opposite Owen Wilson, Jane Seymour is looking back fondly on taking a big risk that became a game-changing moment in her already accomplished career.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE in advance of the comedy film’s return to theaters on Dec. 4 and 11 to mark the 20th anniversary, Seymour, 74, recalls that she and Wilson were both feeling butterflies in the moments prior to the memorable scene in which her character, the wealthy Washingtonian society doyenne Kathleen Cleary attempts to unexpectedly and aggressively seduce him by baring her new breasts and insisting he feel them and call her “Kitty Cat.”

“Owen was actually very nervous about the whole experience, and I was too!” reveals Seymour. “But when I’m in character, I’m Kathleen Cleary. So I said, ‘Jane Seymour might have a problem with what you’re going to do, but currently I’m not her. I’m Kathleen.’ And at first he was like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ ”

Ultimately, both actors leaned into their roles, with Wilson’s real-life discomfort enhancing his performance as he cupped Seymour’s breasts, strategically placed just partially in view of the camera over the course of several takes. “[Director] David Dobkin would say, ‘Can you just relax your fingers a little bit? Can you just move your fingers slightly?’ ” laughed Seymour. “So the whole experience of shooting it was funnier even than the actual scene!”

But Wilson’s well-honed sense of comedy timing kicked in as they were just about to complete the scene, with a flash of inspiration. “After we’d done the scene and we were doing one more last take, Owen whispered to me and just said, ‘When the scene finishes and you leave, just say “Pervert,” ‘ ” she recalled. “I said, ‘Okay,’ and that was the button that that scene needed, and it was amazing.”

Despite her on-screen boldness, Seymour admits she circled the film tentatively at first, wondering if she would be able to pull off such an outrageous turn immediately following six seasons headlining the more wholesome TV drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. She wondered if both Hollywood and her extremely devoted fan base would accept such a radical turnabout.

“Nobody was hiring me for comedy at all, and my agent said that I would have to audition, screen test, etc.,” she remembers. “And then of course I found out that every actress of my age group and slightly older literally would kill for this role. And when I read it, I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever read, specifically that scene that I have with Owen Wilson. And then I thought, ‘I can’t do this – I just did Dr. Quinn!’ And then my then-husband, James Keach, said, ‘You can’t do this. Dr. Quinn’s fans are going to go nuts.’ ”

“And then I read it a second time, and I just thought, ‘I like it even more now.’ And then the third time, I kind of looked at him – clearly now he’s an ex — and I looked at myself and I just thought, ‘You know what? I have to play this role. I just know exactly what I’d do with it, and this is hilarious and iconic.’ ”

Though she’d rarely auditioned throughout her career — which, at that point, included highlights like playing the Bond girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die opposite Roger Moore’s 007, the enduringly popular time-travel romance Somewhere In Time opposite close friend Christopher Reeve and several awards-nominated turns in high-profile TV miniseries — Seymour braved the process and won the role, though she admitted she hadn’t thought herself particularly good at auditioning.

“But when I got it, David Dobkin and they kind of looked at me and they said, ‘Oh, we love your work from Live and Let Die,’ ” she revealed. “They thought I’d done nothing since Live and Let Die! I was 20 years old then, and I was 55 when I came to audition for them. What was I doing for 35 years that completely went past their radar?”

The risqué role proved to be the perfect turnabout from her established screen persona, she said, even if the filmmakers didn’t realize it up front. “[Comedy] was not what I was really known for, but I think what made it even funnier was the fact that I had been Dr. Quinn. There was a whole level of humor to me actually playing Kathleen Cleary that had nothing to do with playing Kathleen Cleary, and I don’t think they had any idea of that. They had no idea, actually. I know for a fact he had no idea because people would say, ‘Jane Seymour? Oh my God, that’s hilarious.’ And they go, ‘Well, you haven’t seen her do anything yet!’ ”

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She also remembers in the days before shooting that pivotal scene, the film’s other leading man, Vince Vaughn, who also improvised many of the film’s funniest lines of dialogue, enjoyed teasing her and Wilson about their impending unclothed encounter.

“It was so funny because behind the scenes up to it, we’d all hang out together and Vince kept saying to Owen, ‘Are you ready to see more Seymour?’ ” she explained. “And I said ‘Vince, if you really think that’s an original joke, go back to your writing board.’ ”

“I’m very proud of that movie. I’m so glad I did it,” Seymour, who currently stars on the Acorn mystery drama Harry Wilde and will appear in the upcoming Hallmark Channel miniseries The Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas, says today. “And it opened up a whole career for me. Usually, when you’re an actress at 40, and you’ve been a leading lady, they kind of go, ‘Enough. Thank you, next.’… [But] I did a ton of comedy after that, of course, worked with Chuck Lorre and did some amazing stuff with him, and now Harry Wilde, that’s very comedic. It opened up an unbelievable second career.”

Tickets are available now for Fathom Entertainment’s release of Wedding Crashers 20th Anniversary in select theaters across the country on Dec. 4 and 11, including for the first time ever in theatres an additional 10 minutes of deleted scenes from the 2005 Wedding Crashers home entertainment release.