Nicole Beharie Says She Was ‘Blacklisted’ by Some People After ‘Sleepy Hollow’ Exit
Not many shows kill off a lead before they end but Sleepy Hollow did just that. Nicole Beharie left the show after season 3. She has now revealed the circumstances behind her exit and said she was blacklisted by some people.
Nicole Beharie revealed why she left ‘Sleepy Hollow’
Beharie played Abbie Mills on Sleepy Hollow from 2013 to 2016. Her character was shockingly killed off.
Her statement at the time claimed it was the character’s time to end. “Sleepy Hollow has been an incredible experience in every way. I loved playing Abbie. It’s been such a gift to have taken this wild ride… Alas, Abbie Mills has done all she was meant to do,” read the statement according to Shadow and Act. “I’m excited about what the show has in store for us next. I’m rooting for my co-stars and crew… they have been my inspiration, my teachers, family, my friends, over the last few seasons.” The actor later revealed on Instagram what led to her leaving the show.
“For the last, like five years I’ve been battling an autoimmune condition,” she said in a video on Instagram, according to ET Canada. “It actually happened while I was on Sleepy Hollow,” she said. “For all those Sleepy Hollow fans out there, that’s one of the reasons I had to [exit].”
She revealed that her weight changed because of this and she had rashes. Beharie said, “There’s a lot of misconceptions about when people have health challenges and restrictions and I think you can get demonized for setting limitations and boundaries, but I think that is something that we can not allow to happen to our bodies as women, as people of color. It’s important to own and master and love what we got.”
She said she was blacklisted
The actor talked to the Los Angeles Times about her time on Sleepy Hollow. Beharie says she looks at her experience of getting sick while working differently now.
“My co-star and I were both sick at the same time but I don’t believe that we were treated equally,” she said. “He was allowed to go back to England for a month [to recover while] I was given episode 9 to shoot on my own. So I pushed through it and then by the end of that episode I was in urgent care. And all the doctors, including the doctors that the studio was sending, were all confirming, ‘Hey, she can’t work right now.'”
She said there was a lot of pressure in this situation and it affected her career. “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,” Beharie said. “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.”
Beharie recently appeared in Black Mirror and Little Fires Everywhere. She is also starring in the newly released movie, Miss Juneteeth.
