Nicole Beharie takes aim at demons on ‘Sleepy Hollow’
Who ya gonna call to fend off the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Make it ghostbuster Nicole Beharie.
The 28-year-old actress is kicking butt as Lt. Abbie Mills, Westchester cop battling supernatural evils on the highly-rated Fox drama “Sleepy Hollow,” which airs Mondays at 9 p.m.
“I started boxing training right before I got here, just because I felt like Abbie would be pretty tough and know how to defend herself,” Beharie said by phone from Wilmington, NC, where the spooky series is filmed.
“I haven’t been able to continue [training] because our schedule is pretty hectic, but I have videos in my trailer,” she says with a laugh.“Don’t tease me!”
Armed with spunk and a gun, Beharie takes charge on-screen, despite her diminutive height. Beharie is 5-foot-1 — a sizable contrast to her 6-foot-1 costar Tom Mison, who plays Mills’ 200-year-old partner, Ichabod Crane.
“With his additional boots and heels and all that stuff — I look like such a teeny, tiny person. I’ve always been able to hide it, never really cared about it,” she says. “This is the first time I’ve been, like, ‘I’m short!’ ”
Beharie admits to overcompensating at times. “For a while I was wearing super-high heels, running and fighting monsters. Then I was, like, I give up — I can’t do this for, you know, 16 hours a day,” she says.
“I’m just gonna have to be, like, peeking in, just managing to get into the take to see my forehead,” she jokes.
Beharie is both surprised and happy she nailed such a commanding part on the spooky show.
“There’s a kind of look that happens when you’re doing action, horror and sci-fi. I would have to be a really leggy, lean, buxom blond to be doing that, you know?” she says, laughing. “I was, like, wow — I never really imagined that for myself, so I’m stoked!”
Since her 2007 graduation from Juilliard drama school, Beharie has scored a steady stream of gripping work on both the big and small screens.
In her first film she portrayed a single mother wrongfully accused of dealing drugs, opposite Alfre Woodard, in 2008’s “American Violet.” In 2011 she landed both a multi-episode arc as an attorney on CBS drama “The Good Wife” and the role of a woman attempting a relationship with a sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender (whom Beharie later dated), in the movie “Shame.”
Earlier this year she starred as Rachel Robinson, wife of history-making African-American pro baseball player Jackie Robinson (actor Chadwick Boseman), in the critically acclaimed biopic “42.”
Beharie says films like “American Violet” and “42” have extra meaning because they hit home.
“These stories are important in that it’s a big part of our history, in particular because I am a woman of color,” says Beharie, who has lived in New York 12 years. “It’s a part of my history that some days I can’t ignore. I’m actually shooting in the South, and I’ve had a few little interesting things happen since I’ve been here myself.”
She won’t discuss specifics, but Beharie — who with her father, mother and three siblings spent part of her childhood in Georgia and South Carolina — says she handles uncomfortable situations in her own way. “Sometimes it’s a reality. Some things are still going on,” she says. “I sort of don’t linger on it. Otherwise, you let things fester, and I don’t think it does anyone any good, ultimately.”
But she does commend the “Sleepy Hollow” writers for touching on — if somewhat humorously — the subject of slavery. When Crane first sees Beharie’s Lt. Mills in the series pilot, he’s surprised that she has been, as he says, “emancipated.” When she suggests Crane keep his thoughts in check, he replies, “If you’re insinuating I endorse slavery, I’m offended.” A stunned but steady Mills counters, “Wait, back up — you’re offended?”
“I think kudos for throwing that kind of thing in there,” Beharie says. “He would be really taken aback not only that I’m a woman, but also a person of color. He only saw people of color in chains. We have to mention that, or people are not going to go for the ride.”
Fox is counting on viewers to stick with the hit show and has already ordered a second season.
Beharie, for her part, is fully committed, both in front of and behind the camera. Lt. Mills has demons to battle, after all.
“I’m probably the on-set push-up and exercise queen,” she says. “I have to do something to maintain the ‘oh my god we’re running from monsters’ energy, even when it’s, like, 4:00 in the morning.”
And she’s not above goading cast and crew to join her.
“I’ll be jumping rope or doing push-ups — and I’ll call all the guys in and be, like, ‘Okay, guys — do 25, no stopping, let’s do this!,’” she says, laughing. “It’s kind of like my competitive nature. I’ve never done a role where that was okay. Could you imagine? I’m, like, playing Rachel Robinson — and doing push-ups and high-kicks!”