A New York native, Allen began her stage career as a child and went on to win awards for her performance in the Broadway musical "Two Gentleman of Verona" and later played Doreen in the NBC soap "Generations." She is currently writing a cookbook as a spinoff of her role. "Grace is a great cook," she says. "Jonelle is not. But my grandmother was, so I'm doing a cookbook of Southern recipes."

Don't tell Jonelle Allen that her CBS series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is politically correct. Sure, it stars Jane Seymour as one of the first female doctors to practice on the post-Civil War frontier. And it features Allen and Henry G. Sanders, both black actors, as a husband and wife who buck the prejudices of the time to establish themselves as the town blacksmith and cafe owner.

But the show is not trying to be politically correct, insists Allen, who appears as the feisty Grace. "This show is historically correct", she says. "We have researchers who spend a lot of time reading and finding out exactly what was going on [during that period]. There is nothing on the show that was not part of history." The problem, says Allen, is that "a lot of our opinions and ideas have been formed by the media, and the media, as we know, has taken a lot of license with a lot of things. So when people see [Dr. Quinn], they say No, that's not so. If anything, I hope the show will motivate people to go back and find out if we were wrong."

Political correctness aside, Beth Sullivan, the series' executive producer-director-writer, has made a conscious effort to integrate characters of various races into the show, say Allen and Sanders, and to present them in a realistic way.

"One of the things I liked when I took on [the role] was all the ethnic groups that are in the show," says Sanders, who plays the former slave known as Robert E. [Beth] didn't have them speaking broken English or shuffling. Jonelle and I spoke with the writers and Beth about how people creating shows want to make people of color nice. That's boring. Give them shades of gray like everybody else."

An upcoming episode, "Things My Father Never Gave Me," gives Sanders the opportunity to display the many shades of Robert E. When he is offered the enormous sum of $2,000 to repair the boiler on a train, "Robert becomes obsessed with doing it and becomes a tyrant," Sanders relates. "That's wonderful!"

Likewise, Grace is able to display her true self. "She's not a passive person," says Allen, noting that her outspokenness has caused her to lock horns with the town storekeeper, played by Orsen Bean, and brothel owner William Shockley.

Allen brings to her role a life of experience in performing, having appeared on-stage when before she was old enough for school. "When you're three years old and singing and dancing, and no one is saying you should sing and dance, it's something you want to do. I know this is what I love to do."

She has worked extensively in theater, earning a Tony Award nomination as best actress in a musical for her role in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Allen has done much feature film and TV work as well, acquainting herself with the daytime audience through the soap Generations.

Saunders came to acting via a very different route. After nine years in the army--including two tours in Germany and two in Vietnam--and a brief marriage, he turned to writing an autobiographical to deal with unresolved emotions. The novel didn't sell, but he did discover an acting workshop at college, which he was attending under the G.I. Bill.

Jonelle Allen had a memorable run on GENERATIONS from 1989 to 1991, but these days, she an be seen as Grace, the cafe proprietor, on the hit show DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN. "I enjoy DR. QUINN because we're a show -- and this is not a pun-- that generations of people can watch. There aren't a lot of series like that on television." DR. QUINN is also a show that prides itself on authenticity. "Our creator/producer, Beth Sullivan, is painstakingly accurate about DR. QUINN," she explains. "Everything you see on our program is something that either did or could have happened [in the late 1800's]." Allen should know. She grew up studying black history and doesn't find it unusual that Grace, a black woman, runs and owns a cafe during the post-Civil War era. "You'd think it might be unheard of, but on the stage coach [route], there was a hotel and a restaurant in a Northern California community that was black-owned," she reveals.

Allen adds that she is pleased that DR. QUINN is so historically accurate. "Up until recently, you never really saw that there were African-Americans making contributions or [being] an intricate part of communities -- as were Asians," notes the actress, "and women were also a viable part of the West." Despite DR. QUINN's huge audience, Allen says that she is still more recognized for her role as Doreen because "I look more like her than I do Grace. And many people know me from GENERATIONS's new life on cable and in international [markets]. I was in Tahiti last year and people kept yelling, 'Doreen, Doreen!'"

Currently single, Allen plays "mom" to Jazzy, her Siamese cat, and Jenny, a black Labrador mix. She's also writing a cookbook as a tribute to her grandmother. "She passed away two years ago," Allen says softly. "We were very close and I'm putting together a collection of Southern food recipes and anecdotes in her memory. It's a way for my grandmother to live on -- which she already does in the character of Grace."