SLEEPY HOLLOW: Q&A with Tom Mison

BIG NEWS!  Ichabod may change his clothes!  Possibly.

TV’s newest hunk, Sleepy Hollow‘s Tom Mison, recently talked with reporters via conference call and answered questions about costume changes, creating Ichabod’s character, acting with guest star John Noble, and chemistry with costar Nicole Beharie.

Q: I’ve been really impressed with Ichabod as he is very intelligent and a very proper man, and he balances out really well with Abbie, who’s kind of shown herself to be willing to bend the rules when necessary. Are there any circumstances that we’ll see Ichabod be willing to kind of bend the rules or act out?  Beyond he yelled at Abbie once, but beyond that he’s really kept very calm.

Mison: Yes. I think without giving too much away, when things start to get very personal, when there are revelations that are personal attacks on Crane and his past, that’s when the rules start to fly out of the window, and he starts misbehaving a little bit more. Yes. I’m trying not to spoil it. I’m sorry?

Q: Is that fun to play when he kind of gets to act out a bit?

Mison: Oh, it’s nice. Every chance to show a different side to Ichabod is great. As a very obvious example, the difference between Ichabod we see in the 18th century and the modern-day Ichabod.  There are different sides to him him, and equally the well behaved and the less well behaved; the more unhinged Ichabod. There’s plenty of that to come, and I’m trying desperately not to throw spoilers at you or I’ll be in a lot of trouble.

Q: Is Ichabod ever going to wear modern clothes?

Mison: It was question number two. I was wondering how long it would be before that question comes up. I expected every question to be that. Yes. That will be mentioned very, very soon. You’ll see the question of clothes coming up. I think we quite liked having Ichabod in—give him an iconic look, which I think everyone’s managed to achieve rather nicely. In terms of the character; he’s a long way from home, and 250 years away from home so anything that he can hold on to from his time, I think he certainly will. Any time you think of how much he stinks, just think of it as a big stinking security blanket that he carries around with him. Yes. That will be addressed shortly.

Q: The show has a premise that even its fans agree is somewhat implausible. Did you have any trepidation about signing on because of that rather outrageous concept for the show?

Mison: I always like to have faith that an audience will suspend their disbelief if you present it to them in the right way. I find it peculiar when people scoff at one bold idea, and yet they’ll then turn over and watch a man travel through time in a police phone box. I think it’s just how you present the idea, and between Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and Len Wiseman, their careers have been built on asking people to suspend their disbelief because I think once you do that, once you can get an audience to go with you on an idea then you can just go anywhere, and that’s where the fun stuff happens. No real trepidation, more faith in the great American public that they’ll join us, and luckily it seems to have paid off.

Q: One of the questions you were mentioning—the difficult balance involved in the character, and that definitely seems true. Once of the things that has been so much fun to watch is seeing what you do with Ichabod in terms of blending the comedy of his reactions to the contemporary world, and the drama that comes up from the older world. How do you think about that balance? Is it difficult to not get too far into the comedy? How do you sort of think about that when you’re approaching it?

Mison: Yes. The temptation could be to just go nuts on the comedy; not only for me but for the writers as well because there’s a wealth of things we can do with that. We worked out very early on, Len and I doing the pilot, that the only way you can really sell the comedy is to play it as straight as the serious stuff. Finding the balance between the confusion and those funny scenes and the more serious, “Oh my God, the apocalypse is coming” scenes. The way to balance them is to play them with a very similar tone rather than separating them as this is now a tragic scene and this is a comic scene. Everything is very real for Ichabod, and so we just have to try and play everything straight, which I think was a really good thing to find and a bit of a saving grace in terms of performance. It also stops me from hamming it up.

Q: I was wondering if you’ve been able to add your own touches to this role, or do all of Ichabod’s traits come from the script?

Mison: No, they come from long discussions from day one; from before we started shooting the pilot. As soon as I met Len and Alex and Bob Orci, we all kind of had similar ideas about what Ichabod should be, and this sort of story that we all think would be the most exciting, and yes, there’s constant discussions between me and the writers. They’re very open to my ideas, and I love all of theirs so yes, it’s kind of a balance. It’s a balance, and it’s changing a lot. It’s so nice to be a part of something that runs for such a long time. Before this, I think the longest series I’ve done has been I think six episodes. Lots of mini-series I’ve done before, but never done something that stretches over 13 episodes and now with a second season added to that so it’s nice to find a very gradual evolution to the character, and, yes, that comes from both counts because we’ve got excellent writers.

Q: I wanted to ask you about John Noble; what it’s been like working with him?

Mison: It’s really remarkable. Our first scene together it’s just me and him sitting opposite each other at a table, and he came in and sat down and we did the scene, and I was quite surprised when someone shouted “cut” because I forgot that there were cameras and other people about the place because when you’re acting with someone like John you just completely lose yourself in it. He’s mesmerizing. He’s brilliant.

Q: How has it been being able to kind of build a rapport with these really great character actors that are coming in and adding great dimension to the show?

Mison: It’s really nice. It’s great to have actors who are often cast against type. They’re often—it’s surprising, the actors who are coming in for characters. I think very few people would imagine that John Cho would become the baddie, which we notice in the pilot. Clancy, Clancy Brown who is—you don’t see him often as the father figure, or the Obi-Wan Kenobi type. Orlando Jones, you wouldn’t immediately think of as casting as the highest ranking police officer, and I think actually a lot of people would be rather surprised at me being cast as Ichabod. I think there are probably lots of people in England who wouldn’t have—casting people who wouldn’t have considered me for it. It’s one of the brilliant things of the show is that they cast the net wide, and they surprise you with their casting choices.

Q: I’m going to harken back to your chemistry with Nicole Beharie, because I think that what you two have on screen is, like you said, magical, and I’m wondering if that was right off the bat, if you two are as magical off screen, and if you’ve built a friendship and if that’s what we’re seeing on screen?

Mison: I think it was right off the bat. After I put myself on tape in London, I was then called over to Los Angeles to screen test, and it was a five hour screen test. The first two were just me, Len Wiseman and the producers and the casting people, a big room of people, and we played around for a couple of hours and then Nicole, who had already been cast, came in and we read together and played with a few scenes for about three hours. Yes. It was instant. I think we’re very similar actors. We both like to play with what the other actor gives us, and we both like to be generous with each other. We know that the good stuff, and what everyone refers to as chemistry, is actually generosity. We like to be generous with each other mainly—it’s nice to throw things at an actor and be excited and surprised by what they throw back, and so yes it was fairly instant, and we’d like exploring the scenes together rather than as two individuals. We like to do it as a team, and yes she’s as wonderful off screen as she is on. It’s always a nice thing to find friends on a job, and I think I certainly have with her.