‘Sleepy Hollow’ Created an “Us Against Her” Environment for Star Nicole Beharie
‘Sleepy Hollow’ Created an “Us Against Her” Environment for Star Nicole Beharie, ‘Burn It Down’ Book Claims https://t.co/J2FJP7z7XK
- The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 6, 2023
The Hollywood exposé Burn It Down from Maureen Ryan, which hit shelves on Tuesday, alleges that Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison - who played detective Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane, respectively - “did not want to have a whole lot to do with each other,” according to one source who worked on the show, allegedly resulting in Mison’s character’s famous “courtly” bow, because the co-stars did not want to hug each other.
That also allegedly translated to their onscreen narratives, according to showrunner Clifton Campbell, who told Ryan that Mison and Beharie “believed that the relationship between the characters should not evolve into a romantic relationship,” despite fan calls for one. (Neither Beharie nor Mison commented for the book.)
• Burn It Down also claims that following alleged conflict between co-creator and director Len Wiseman and Beharie while filming the pilot, actress Lyndie Greenwood - who portrayed Beharie’s sister, Jenny Mills - was brought on as a potential replacement.
• Part of the drama, the book alleges, was driven by the happenings within the writers room, which Ryan notes had three people of color in season one, but had returned for season two with an all-white male team outside a “sole woman of color.”
• Multiple sources told Ryan that people with power on the show claimed from early on they did not have “a good experience with Nicole,” but then spread that to others, including writers who had not worked with her.
It was a “double standard” as co-star Orlando Jones described it, with another source sensing she felt alone. “Especially if that person is a woman and a woman of color - those are two groups that already have challenges to begin with,” that same source told Ryan. “It created a very us-against-her environment from day one.”
• Beharie was said to have prefaced statements with “I’m not trying to be difficult,” despite one source saying they never witnessed her being so. Or at least no more than Mison, who was allegedly described by a producer as “the star” and who another source described as “a handful” as well. “He had his own set of issues,” they said. “I’ve always said that on any other show, he would’ve been the biggest problem.”
• According to sources, Beharie showed a trepidation about the role, a massive and potentially multiyear undertaking.
• Also, both she and Mison showed difficulty adjusting to being the leads of the show, with co-star Jones telling Ryan that both were “out of their depths” and “no one was helping them.”
• As both Mison and Beharie went “through steep learning curves that sometimes involved friction with colleagues” wrote Ryan, Beharie’s growing pains were treated differently.
“When a bunch of white guys say a person of color is difficult, I tend to assume that there’s a lot more to that story,” one source said. “I found her to be pleasant, extremely talented, and an actor who was adjusting to being a lead. There are growing pains with that. In the time I was there, where the discrepancy came in was how their growing pains were viewed and handled.”
• Writer Shernold Edwards was hired on the show and described the experience as “hellish” with “a miserable vibe on set.” When she suggested she and Beharie get together to talk, showrunner Campbell “went off,” telling her she couldn’t talk to Beharie and calling the actress “crazy.” (Campbell denied he called Beharie “crazy,” stating that the allegation was “patently false” and that she was “professional” and “cordial and fun.”)
• Campbell also told Ryan that Mison and Beharie were treated the same on set during his season and “to protect evolving conversations as the studio began to look past season three and the ramifications for any subsequent seasons, I told the entire room not to share these ongoing discussions with any cast or crew.”
• A source who worked with Sleepy Hollow‘s first showrunner, Mark Goffman, also alleged that there “were times when serious issues were brought not just to Mark, but to the powers that be and they either brushed them aside or they were just not handled.”
• The book also addresses season one reports that Beharie had bitten a hairstylist on the show’s set. That stylist, Jones said, had been brought to address issues Beharie had raised about how much money Sleepy Hollow was putting towards her wig versus Mison’s. Jones maintains he was with her in the hair and makeup trailer and never saw the incident, though he has a photo on his phone “in which Beharie pretended to bite” him as part of a joke. He also expressed that no “physical altercation could have occurred without someone seeing or noticing,”
The stylist declined to “discuss in detail what happened on Sleepy Hollow with Beharie,” adding that “I am writing about my experiences as well.” She went to call her time on the show “one of the worst projects I have worked on as a hairstylist.”
• Other incidents include Campbell becoming “unproductively” emotional and defensive at times when Black writers made suggestions around elements of the scripts, potential unconscious bias being addressed by HR in terms of script assignments and fans criticizing the show for its treatment of Beharie’s character.
• The show had high turnover among its employees, with on-set hours often “brutal."
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