Getting honest about her past. Nicole Beharie is opening up about her time as the lead, Abbie Mills, on Sleepy Hollow, revealing that what happened is “really interesting,” especially in the climate we’re in now.
“We had a lot of things happen that paralleled the conversations that are happening in this moment,” Beharie, 35, told the Los Angeles Times in a new interview.
The actress, who is now promoting Miss Juneteenth, exited the show in 2016. Three years later, she revealed that she left because she was battling an autoimmune condition.
“My co-star and I were both sick at the same time but I don’t believe that we were treated equally,” she told the San Diego Tribune in another interview. “He was allowed to go back to England for a month [to recover while] I was given Episode 9 to shoot on my own. I pushed through it and then by the end of that episode I was in urgent care.ll the doctors, including the doctors that the studio was sending, were all confirming, ‘Hey, she can’t work right now.’”
In multiple interviews, she explained that she got a lawyer and worked through it but was on eight different prescription meds. The 42 star told the New York Times that she also had checkups every day “to make sure I was actually sick” and production had to shut down for two weeks.
“There’s a lot of pressure in a situation like that where so many people are relying on you alone to get up and get going,” the Florida native added. “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 added: “Sometimes I think that some people I was working with didn’t like that I was unwell but loved by the audience. Everyone of color on that show was seen as expendable and eventually let go.”
Beharie then explained that looking back, she could have “been more diplomatic,” but can only affect her choices going forward.
“I’ve been making sure that I’m working with the right folks. It’s something that we’ve seen with #MeToo and Time’s Up, where people who’ve asked questions have been discarded. It’s not a new story [but] I never thought it would be my story,” she added. “Unfortunately it is, but healing takes time and I feel like I’m on the other side of it. I learned a lot. I wouldn’t change anything. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, though.”
Miss Juneteenth, which follows a former beauty queen who enters her daughter into the local Miss Juneteenth pageant, is now available on video on demand.
