“I want great things for Nicole Beharie and Sleepy Hollow isn’t one of them.”
Fellow team member, Carlyn expressed my sentiments exactly during our discussion of Sleepy Hollow season two and it’s treatment of the characters of color and their respective cast members.
Sadie Gennis, an editor for TV Guide, did a great job explaining many of the reasons Sleepy Hollow did itself and its audience a disservice in season two, including its minimized representation of its increasingly marginalized folks. The sane side of the Sleepy Hollow Fandom has done an amazing job laying out the facts, calling out the show’s writers and executive staff, asking questions and demanding answers—or a passing of the mic.
Many of my friends and readers and the assortment of other folks who are aware of my existence can attest to my adoration for Nicole Beharie and her work. So critiquing Sleepy Hollow has been a bit complicated from the beginning. Luckily through most of the first season, I didn’t need to.
I bragged about Sleepy Hollow, I put friends on to the show, attended Sleepy Hollow related events, I was invested in the show because Sleepy Hollow was a bright, colorful, shining example of getting it right and doing so with my favorite actress at the helm!
Then everything changed.
When I think about it, I don’t know that I ever had a favorite actor or actress before Nicole Beharie. There was my brief affair with Sara Ramirez and even Nikki M. James but my proximity or lack thereof to NY made it difficult for me to enjoy the latter. Along comes Beharie. The first artist in a while to embody all of what I need in a fav (talented, feminist, and willing to speak up). I’m with James Baldwin and Paul Robeson in believing that artists are and should be activists and advocates.
I’m also very mindful, in up-close and personal ways, how privilege and oppression factor into the equation. So I’m always appreciative when artists of color, especially Black women, including Black transwomen, speak up in anyway.
We often have this notion that it takes orchestrated, grandiose gestures to use our platforms to effect change. This simply isn’t true. We see proof in artists like Jerrika Hinton (Grey’s Anatomy), Janelle Monae, Amandla Stenberg (who constantly has me asking what the hell I was doing at her age), Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy), who many are calling this generation’s Belafonte, Solange and many more.
So when Beharie took to her Instagram to let us know she wasn’t happy about the fact that Sleepy Hollow, the show in which she is one of two leads, was originally going to leave her out of the DVD commentary, I experienced mixed emotions. I was happy she spoke up (and disappointed she later deleted the post), and pissed at what seemed like the final nail in the coffin for my relationship with Sleepy Hollow—a show that had spent an entire season, unapologetically showing me how they really felt.
There are some who say artists have to be patient and smart, to play the game by first getting their foot in the door and performing the hell out of the role of maid so they can get to lead a show playing a top-notch, high-profile criminal attorney; pay their dues (so to speak) before earning the right and acquiring enough footing to speak up without having the ground floor of their career knocked out from under them. I thought that’s what Viola Davis resiliently spent her career doing so that Nicole Beharie didn’t have to. We’ve heard that rhetoric before.
At what point can we get back to expecting our artists, those with undoubtedly more influence and power than us, to speak up on our behalf and to amplify the voices of their constituents, those keeping their mics plugged in? An equally important question is how do we protect and support the artists that do?
If you’re a fan of Nicole Beharie and one of those “relatively conscious” negros Baldwin was talking about, then it’s likely you understand my dilemma. Even if one of these doesn’t apply, you have to want more, want better for our artists of color, especially those who are brave enough to seize opportunities as agents of change when the mic is in their hands.
In discussing this with other team members of The Visibility Project I’m reminded of the aftermath of school integregation and the time Eartha Kitt was blackballed for speaking her mind. So what do we do? How do we hold enterprises like Sleepy Hollow accountable and at the same time protect and support the artists involved?
I’ll be honest, I was disappointed when I found out Sleepy Hollow had been renewed for a third season. I was and still am conflicted. The cancellation of Sleepy Hollow could’ve been a loud statement that the bait and switch Fox pulled won’t be tolerated—you know just in case the plummeting season two ratings weren’t enough.
Cancellation, however, could have left Beharie, Lyndie Greenwood, Orlando Jones, Jill Marie Jones, and Amandla Stenberg unemployed. Though I don’t for a moment doubt any of their capabilities to land other roles, I’m not naïve. I realize landing a gig like the one each of them held in Sleepy Hollow is no easy feat for actors of color (not because of talent-but opportunity).
By the end of my discussion with Carlyn, we concluded that we had no hope for Fox’s Sleepy Hollow. We were left wanting a bigger, better gig for Nicole Beharie, one that will treat her and her character better because Beharie and #AbbieMillsDeserveBetter. For me, this want extends to the other actors on the show.
It’s been confirmed that Orlando Jones, who plays Frank Irving, another character affected by Sleepy Hollow’s marginalization, has left the show. Many fans are feeling some disappointment and sadness at the news. Jones has been vocal and has worked to amplify the voice of fans calling for a better Sleepy Hollow, throughout season two. Whatever his reason for leaving, I’m elated he’s landed work outside of the show.
I want to be clear. I value and respect the autonomy of artists, including and especially my favs. I don’t want the status of Beharie, or any vocal artist, as an activist or advocate to overshadow, in importance, their passion for their art and their desires as an artist.
What Beharie wants is ultimately what’s important here. I’ve learned not to want more for others than they want for themselves. If Beharie is happy with Fox and Sleepy Hollow, then it’s on me to resolve my internal conflict and continue to critique and demand better of the show or call it quits after all and admire my fav in her other body of work.
If Beharie wants better than Sleepy Hollow then I’m back to the question of how do we demand better for our artists and protect them in the process?
Either way, I want great things for Nicole Beharie, and until they get their sh*t together, Fox’s Sleepy Hollow ain’t one of them.
Tags: activism, blerd, color tv, fox, nicole beharie, poc, power, privilege, Sleepy Hollow, Viola Davis, woc
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8 Comments
Great story and excellent comments and points of views..indeed,I followed SH because of Ms. Beharie in appreciation pf her talent,but seeing that she is no longer a part of the cast,I patiently await her next adventure…farewell SH.
Older white female viewer of Sleepy Hollow here. Season 3 just ended and Ms Beharie is now free to find a better gig… and she deserves it after that mess that was season 2. They might have been trying to “whiten” the cast but putting Katrina front and center really damaged the show. I kind of disagree with that opinion though. They started with a white sheriff, got a black sheriff, got a Latina sheriff (I think, they didn’t do much with her character) and then Abbie got a black supervisor in the FBI. I can’t say I kept track of all the actors but it seemed like they tried to keep it about 50/50.
It’s not about the number of people of color vs. whites. That’s not diversity. Approaching it that way is just about meeting a quota. It’s deeper than that. Also, the 2nd sheriff, Reyes, maybe she was supposed to be Latinx but the actor is SouthEast Asian-Indian american to be exact.
I like Nicole. I watched the show for her and the chemistry between she and Tim. That’s it. I am not a fan of channel 5
I’m a fan of Sleepy Hollow and Nicole Beharie. And I was disappointed with Season 2 as well. But I’m not following her twitter account and everything the actress says.
That said, I don’t understand why the conversation isn’t centered on THE THING that went RACIALLY wrong on the FOX NETWORK in a VISUAL WAY. Icabod’s WHITE wife was a much bigger part of the story than she was in season 1, a lot more screen time. She was inserted and reinserted and reinserted again into story lines when she was not necessary.
White beauty aesthetic was not as present as they liked and whoever at Fox tried to insert it -when the story line this season was already kinda weak. They added the white blond guy for the same reason? To increase the white audience? He too was showing up when he wasn’t necessary to the story. (He’d be perfect to show up every 3 or 4 episodes with a magic weapon- not every week.)
The wife was used in a much better way during the first season when she was an idea, one of the goals for Ichabod to strive for, eternally frustrated – until the end of the show in year 5 or 6
IMO whoever in charge of watching the ratings figured that part out. There was nothing for this woman to do but ignore the obvious about her son in very this unchanging way EVERY SINGLE WEEK. So they killed her -suddenly and stupidly but at least she’s gone.
And now you’re telling us that they tried to (or succeeded at) pushing Beharie off the DVD commentary. They are whitening things out front and behind the scenes then — and ratings fell because whiteness was more important than story telling?
Aside from stopping with the whitening of everything on all sides, Sleepy Hollow needs to get on an X-files pattern of story telling. Main story every other week. Random completely unrelated side monster every other week — side effect of the rift between our world and the nether world.
And there’s plenty of story and signs and history they can use to progess the main story forward slowly without it seeming slow.
I could not for the life of me figure out why the heck they let such a major event happen with Molock without identifying him as a side show and not NEARLY the main event. It was like there was a conclusion to the main story line but not.
And why haven’t they created a path that each horseman of the apocalypse must follow before he can rise – a path where each one has to collect a ring, a stone, or get a person to do X on the night of the full moon in a certain order.
Icabod and Abby could find out about the path of each one and stop them from getting each thing they need to get like a video game. You could make them seem like they are making progress toward shutting the gate between earth and the other world for 3 to 5 years worth of episodes.
I could only agree that Nicole Beharie needed to leave if we were to expect more of the same going into Season 3. The above snub and terrible writing was committed under the old guard, the show is under a completely different watch going forward.
The main cast has also been trimmed from 6 to 3, with only Nicole, Tom and Lyndie returning. The plot tumors were wrapped up in the finale and excised, freeing up the writers to put emphasis back on where it should have been in the first place. We’ll have to wait and see what the new showrunner and recently hired writers bring to the table, but there are promising signs that the new showrunner is not only engaging fandom but is sincerely listening to (and probably fully aware of) all of the problems that hung over season 2.
I will disagree a little about the question of whether twitter and fandom should mobilize if we do not know the minds of the artists and whether they want their jobs saved. No one can fully know another’s mind, but we can make sure that as long as they have the job they have that the producers and writers in charge should not bank solely on a viewer’s love of the show’s stars to tune in each week. We should continue to keep the writer’s team on notice, to call them out when a harmful trope is used, or when the main cast is disproportionately used or the representation begins to skew in the wrong direction. If those calls to action continue to be ignored, then it would be time to tune out in numbers.
A sidenote about Sleepy Hollow’s fandom and #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter, the squeaky wheel did get the oil with backing Nicole over the DVD commentary debacle. The support she received as a result of that Instagram post, and the relentless campaigning by fandom made it so that one of the last things the former showrunner tweeted about the show was having Nicole in the studio to record commentary.
Very in depth discussion. I am a little simpler. Of course I like her also as an actress and the fact she is damn good looking.
I came to Sleepy Hollow for Nicole Beharie and I will remain as long as she does. That’s not to say I don’t agree with the points highlighted in your assessment; I most certainly do, as anybody with eyes and half a gnat’s brain could see what was happening last season. That said, Mark Goffman is gone but M. Raven Metzner and Albert Kim, the co-EPs, were complicit with his sidelining of PoC actors for the season. Moreover, two of the worst writers (NG and SC of that horribly misogynistic, black-woman-save-the-white-damsel episode “Deliverance”) remain and I’m not happy about these facts.
*However,* new showrunner Clifton Campbell has worked with minority actors – i.e. The Glades – he does not appear to be a Goffman type at all. It’s also imperative for me to note that two black writers – Shernold Edwards and Leigh Dana Jackson – have been hired. Their inclusion is monumental, as representation was sorely lacking in Season 2. I think a lot of people think Sleepy Hollow just crashed overnight – it didn’t. The creators went on to Scorpion (CBS) and left Goffman in charge. 3 of the best writers – Aaron Rashaan Thomas, Chitra Elizabeth Sampath, and Jose Molina – are no longer working with show. The S2 writers were not of the same caliber, not by a long shot; but hopefully, Campbell can iron out their kinks. As John Noble said, FOX would not have renewed this show for 18 episodes if they didn’t have a concrete, acceptable vision for the storyline moving forward. If the network hadn’t intervened during Goffman’s reign of terror and demanded re-writes, we might have been looking at an Abbie death scene in the finale.
Now, sure, I became fed up with Season 2 rather early but I stuck with it because this supernatural drama featured 3 actors of color. Hollywood and white America don’t seem to understand PoC star in the world of genre in non-stereotypical roles. Sleepy Hollow, overall, is almost an anomaly in that regard. Yeah, they baited and switched but I refused to be among the millions who ditched due to the agenda. I am thrilled that the plan to make the show more appealing to “middle America” was a ratings disaster otherwise we’d be stuck with Katrina and Henry in the upcoming season.
Although a mess, S2 had gems. I can only pray S3 will be what the FOX press release said, “An exploration of the evolving partnership between Abbie and Ichabod” because their interaction as witnesses makes the show. Sleepy Hollow’s story deserves a proper ending, not a cancellation. Katia Winter and John Noble can find work the next minute, because that’s the power of white privilege. Lyndie’s on a CW pilot but talented though she and Nicole may be, melanin presents great challenges.