Diana Quinna is a character who appears in the Season 3 episode of Quantum Leap, titled "Private Dancer". The part of Diana is played in the episode by Rhondee Beriault.
About Diana[]
Diana is a newly hired waitress at Mario's Hideaway a New York City area nightclub and strip joint, where a male dancer named Rod "The Bod" McCarty is employed, who Sam leaps into. When Al seeks out Ziggy on info on Diana, it's discovered that she moved to the area two years earlier, from the Northwest, after both of her parents died. Diana, a high-school dropout, has worked various brief dead end jobs before getting hired at the nightclub.
It's Sam's mission, as Rod to convince her, to follow her dreams of becoming a professional dancer, and in doing so, to avoid a major life decision misstep which has her becoming a dancer herself, then an escort, prostitute, going through numerous drug arrests and eventually dying of AiDS in several years. Diana is quite naive in many ways. She would love to be a professional dancer but is deaf, and lacks the self esteem to make it on her own. Mario (Louis Mustillo), the club owner has other plans for Diana, hoping to turn Diana into one of his bachelor party "dancers", which Al reports, through Ziggy, would lead her into a life of prostitution, drug arrests and eventual death by AIDS by 1986.
When Diana is granted an audition for a job in a nearby dance company owned by a Joanna Chapman (Debbie Allen), who is one of the regular female patrons of the club, and flunks it due to her not being able to understand audible instructions, she is shattered and things are compounded by the fact that her home has been towed away. With no one else to turn to, Diana returns to the club and talks to Valerie Nevsky (Heidi Swedberg), Mario's assistant. Valerie sets Diana up as an escort. Sam learns of this and seeks her out at the hotel that the "date" has taken her. Risking being dragged away by security, Sam bursts into the room demanding to talk to Diana and asks her to not take the job. Diana makes the right choice and Sam talks Joanne into giving Diana a second chance. This time, Diana makes the cut and Sam leaps out as she thanks him.