nicole beharie on life after sleepy hollow: i was blacklisted
Being a black woman means you’ll get black listed for something out of your control while your coworker gets babied for the same exact issue https://t.co/HmUwOAaf3a
- 🦴kim☆。・ (@notbbyplantain) January 12, 2021
- for those who never watched, nicole was considered the lead of sleepy hollow with tom mison as her sidekick/co-lead. in 2016, both actors became ill, but only nicole was ultimately fired: "For me, six years ago I was on a TV show. My co-star and I both got sick at the same time with the same illness and had different treatments. He was allowed to go on leave for a month and I had to continue working. There was a smokescreen of me getting my own episode titled Mama. By the end of that episode, I started to fall apart."
- presumably because the production team didn't believe her, nicole states that they had multiple doctors coming in to test her ON SET who all confirmed she was ill: "They sent in lots of doctors, and I had daily checkups to make sure I was actually sick because they had to get the production going. Every doctor said I wasn't doing well and that I needed to rest. That is not what they wanted to hear. Months ensued and I got a lawyer. I got my hours down and worked through it. But then I developed an autoimmune condition. I had C. difficile [a bacterium that causes a range of symptoms], which had me on eight different prescription medications."
- while tom was given a month off to go back to england and recover, nicole was forced by production to finish the mama episode: "I pushed through it and then by the end of that episode I was in urgent care. And all the doctors, including the doctors that the studio was sending, were all confirming, ‘Hey, she can't work right now.'"
- after abbie's death, tom was quoted on not understanding the decision: "Abbie is the one the audience can relate to so when you're entering this insane world of Sleepy Hollow, you go with Abbie. She's been the guide and Ichabod is this insane man in the periphery."
- in looking back, nicole now feels like she's at a point of understanding: "I feel like it's taken me the last few years to really see clearly that it wasn't personal, it's about the way that these structures are set up. It was very difficult to talk about at the time because I wanted to get back to work. But I was labeled as problematic and blacklisted by some people."
- she's also aware that the show had a history of killing off it's characters of color: "Sometimes I think that some people I was working with didn't like that I was unwell but loved by the audience...but everyone of color on that show was seen as expendable and eventually let go. I tried to get work afterwards and people were like, 'We heard you were difficult.' But no one can say I was late or unprofessional or negative."
justice for nicole, justice for abbie
src one | src two