How
did you come up with the concept for this show?
ORCI: Well, a young and very talented man named
Phil Iscove, who at the time was an assistant at UTA, came in and said, “You
know, I have this idea of doing a modern-day Sleepy Hollow, and maybe the way
to get into modern-day is to fuse it with a lot of the ideas in Rip Van Winkle. The idea would be that Ichabod Crane was put
to sleep in some way, and woke up 250 years after the Revolutionary War.” And we said, “Where do we sign up?” So from that point, we started developing it
together, over the course of about eight months. When we pitched it to Fox, they jumped on it
right away, which was great because that was really our hope. It just felt like the exact right network for
the show. They have been wildly
supportive since we started and it’s been this wonderful, crazy evolution to
where we are now.
When
you look at projects like Hawaii Five-O, Star Trek, Spider-Man and now Sleepy
Hollow, what excites you about re-imagining these already recognizable stories?
KURTZMAN: Well, one thing is that so many of the
stories that interest us tend to be timeless stories. They have existed and continued in different
iterations over many generations because they say something enduring about the
world that we live in and about who we are.
Sleepy Hollow, particularly, was exciting to us because, speaking
personally, Halloween is my favorite holiday.
My house is basically like Halloween, 365 days a year, with my son. And so, the idea of getting to live in that
kind of world and universe is just delicious, conceptually. Bob and I are really excited by the idea of
getting to fuse the horror genre with a cop procedural, which is such a staple
of television, and bring a new spin to it because we also get to tell much of
our story in the past. And on top of the
case-of-the-week, the solution to the modern-day story is to look to the
past. The idea is that, if you don’t
learn from the past, you’re doomed to repeat it. So, we get to do flashbacks. We get to tell stories over different
centuries, and I think that anybody who loves genre would feel that delicious
prospect.
Where
are you looking to go with the first season?
KURTZMAN: Well, we hope viewers will have an enormous
amount of fun, a lot of scares and a lot of humor. There is really nothing like it on
television. We tell our stories in the
present and in the past, so the story telling spans over 250 years. The other thing is that television is in this
remarkable moment right now, with some of the best writing, some of the best
acting and some of the best directing.
It is really in this renaissance period.
One of the shows that I’ve loved, in the last two years, is Homeland,
and one of the many things that I’ve loved about it is that every episode
single could’ve been the finale. It set
a new standard in the way stories were being told, and I think we’ve embraced
that fully. So, we have jumped into the
deep end of the pool knowing that our premise is one molecule away from
insanity, at all times. We are keeping
it tethered to a grounded, emotional reality that hopefully allows you to buy
into it and to really live in the world.
We have a tremendous cast. They
certainly make it as credible as you could have ever imagined. The directing has been phenomenal. The show is massive. The line between movies and television is
gone these days. And so, when people
watch TV, particularly genre shows like this, I think they are hoping for a
real cinematic experience, and that is what we are intending to deliver to
them, every week.
ORCI: We want to have a rich mythology, but as we
learn more, we are always looking for that great line between a show that you
can step into at any time and catch up, while also being a full show that you
can be rewarded for, for keeping track of it, and that builds upon itself. Finding that fine line is one of our
ambitions in television, and this is certainly an attempt for us to walk a
finer line than we have. But, we like
rich mythologies and we like things to build, and we like the characters to
have an emotional memory, but we are also dealing with a treasured short
story. Some of the elements are familiar
to audiences and allow us to anchor the show in something that audiences may
already know about, so it’s potentially easier to follow without necessarily
being less rich or less dense.
KURTZMAN: Hopefully, viewers will be able to come to an
episode, if they have missed one before – and of course they won’t have because
they are going to watch every single episode – and they are going to be able to
catch up very, very quickly. That’s the
key. Each episode needs to have a
closed-ended story, but the emotional storytelling is very serialized. The characters are carrying their experiences
and building on their experiences, episode to episode. I think we invite people into our living
rooms, every week, through the television because we have emotional connections
to them, or they make us laugh or reflect some part of ourselves that we want
to live in. So, the key is to give the
audience that experience, but also to make sure that they are not lost in
storytelling that is so heavily serialized that, if you miss an episode, you
just can’t catch up. So, we are very
consciously making sure that each episode is somewhat of a stand-alone and, if
there is some serialized element to it, making sure that we reset the things
that the audience needs to know at the top of the show, so that they can move
forward from there.
What
would you say the vibe is for this show?
KURTZMAN: Well, on the horror scale, there is
sensationalist, grotesque horror, and there is suspense horror, and we fall
more into the suspense horror element of it.
But, it does have a sense of humor, like some of the best horror
has. It definitely has a secret mystery,
Da Vinci Code/National Treasure aspect to it, in that we are rewriting history,
or at the very least seeing what the parallel history of certain events
were. We like to revisit events that we
all know, like Paul Revere’s famous ride warning that the British are coming,
or the Boston tea party, or the massacre that ignited revolutionary
fervor. Revisiting those events and
finding out what was happening on the periphery of those things leads to
modern-day discoveries. There is also an
element of the treasure hunter element to it, but then you are also in a race
against evil, and that’s where the horror element comes in. So, it’s a complicated soup of many
tones. Hopefully, when it is working,
all those tones are harmonizing.
When
you were developing this show, what were some of the darkest places that you
guys allowed your imaginations to go to?
KURTZMAN: That is an interesting question because, in
our minds, there is a very big distinction between cable and network, in terms
of what you can get away with, with violence and horror. In a weird way, it’s almost like the
distinction between a straight slasher movie and a psychological horror
movie. We’re not aiming to do a slasher
movie. We’ve always held that line that
we did not want to fully cross, in terms of horror and violence and going to
dark places. For us, the thing that is
more interesting than just dealing with demons is this apocalypse mythology
that has become such a part of the show, and that is enormously fun, but is
really looking more into the dark spaces of the characters and how these demons
reflect their own personal demons. The
bad guy in any good storytelling is always, in some weird way, a mirror for
your hero’s journey and for the challenges that they are facing, and is some
weird physical externalization of that fear that the character is holding onto
and has to overcome. So, all of our
monsters are emerging from that, in terms of what Abbie and Crane have to face
in themselves. I think what you are
going to find, over the course of the season, is that they are going to be battling
their own personal demons and we are going to be finding out a lot of things
about them that you may not know up front and that they may not be telling each
other up front. Some of those places are
darker, some of those places are lighter, and the fun for the audience is a
guessing game of knowing which side is going to emerge.
KURTZMAN: We wanted to make the town slightly bigger
than the actual Sleepy Hollow, in terms of really looking at it from a place of
treasure hunting. There are many, many
secrets hidden beneath the surface of this perfect, quiet New England
town. We didn’t want to go too small
because we would’ve been limited in our options, and we didn’t want to go too
big because it would’ve felt ultimately really false.
ORCI: Actually, our population is 144,000, which
has some relevance biblically. The idea
is that, in the pilot and the series, you are watching a small town with small
town problems become a small town with big city problems. So, it had to be just the right size to have
a familiarity for the habitants with each other, but not everyone knows each other
by name. So, it’s between a city and a
town.
When
we’ve seen Ichabod Crane portrayed on television and in films, he’s usually
tall, thin and a little cowardly. How
did you decide on this version of Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison)?
KURTZMAN: First and foremost, we literally love every
iteration of Sleepy Hollow, but we didn’t want to do what had come before. The whole reason for us to do the show came
in the fact that we were doing a modern-day version, even though we have a lot
of our storytelling rooted in the past.
And because that iteration of Ichabod has been done, we wanted to do a
different version. He is a school
teacher, so we did keep that, but he also fought in the Revolutionary War. So, in a weird way, it allowed us to have our
cake and eat it too. He is definitely a
more robust man-of-action than he was in the short story. But, I think you will find that we’ve tried
to put a spin on every character that is familiar from the short story, and yet
we found ways to make them different, as well.
It felt like a more accessible way to play Ichabod now.
What
made you decide on this cast?
ORCI: Because it is a famous short story, with only
17 pages, and it has never been done modern-day, we came to the conclusion that
we wanted you to meet these characters as though you had never met them before
and let them take you into this world without any previous association. So, it was nice to discover a couple of fresh
faces, who have obviously built a fandom of their own, but who are not really
as widely recognized in television. When
you do that, you really get into their characters, in a way that you don’t, if
you’ve seen them play something else that you were super familiar with before.
In
the case of Tom Mison, originally we were not necessarily going to go for an
English actor, but when we met him and saw him read, we realized that actually,
in the day of the Revolutionary War, many of the folks fighting for revolution
and independence of this country may have been recently arrived from the
UK. So, the idea that this man with an
eloquent accent is actually one of the first Americans who fought and almost
died for this country was fascinating.
It’s a tricky part. It’s got to
have a sense of humor, but it’s got to be smart. Ichabod Crane can’t just be going around
marveling at every new thing that he sees.
He’s got to play his cards close to his vest, so he doesn’t seem like he
is totally out of time. He’s trying to
fit in and he has the intelligence to do so and so, and Tom is great for that.
With
Nicole Beharie, you have a really strong woman.
When you are playing a detective, particularly as a woman, you either
are going to embrace the fact that it’s a man’s world you are jumping into, or
you’re going to ignore it. With Nicole,
we are able to play the complexity of a little bit of an underdog, who is able
to hold her own around her peers, and who, in meeting Ichabod Crane, has a
sympathy and a connection to a guy who everyone else thinks is crazy because
she, herself, has sometimes been an outsider.
And yet, she is still able to keep a skepticism and a groundedness that
is so key to the show. The show is
attempting to portray some pretty nutty stuff, and Nicole brings an earthy
point of view to it that allows you to see the thing through her eyes and enjoy
it without letting yourself go nuts and without forgetting that.
KURTZMAN: The first challenge is that we tend to not
think of the small screen as a small screen.
We have tremendous ambition, and that’s why we were lucky to team of up
with Len Wiseman, once again, who has now had experience on both the small
screen and the big screen. Our ambition
was the biggest problem because we wanted to make sure that we really set the
tone of a cinematic, theatrical experience, every week. You see this thing and it looks like a
movie. You want to set a template when
you produce a pilot that is ambitious, but make it repeatable, visually. Len did a great job of marking some of the
signatures of the show, like the way Ichabod Crane looks at the world. You choose different angles than you would
choose, if you were shooting a modern person because we all take those things
that we have seen for granted. All of
those little queues are things that you might not be able to articulate without
such an experienced director to articulate them to you. We really took the time to find those moments
and to give the show a signature look and style. We are going for a lot. We have period, we have super-natural, we
have action, and then we have modern-day.
It’s a big thing to bite off, and you don’t want to skimp on any part of
it, so you have to do a lot of planning in a short time. The small screen may not be the small screen
anymore, but it is certainly a small schedule, and that is the thing that you
always have to overcome, in terms of how many days you get to prep and how many
days you get to shoot. You’ve got to
really plan ahead.
What
do you enjoy about exploring the aspects of the story that are set in the past?
ORCI: It’s very fun writing for period. It’s not something you get to do very often,
in television. I think that there is
such a robust, exciting and complicated backstory in the show. And you get to see Ichabod Crane, his wife
Katrina and the Headless Horseman, who may not have always been headless, and
all the different characters and what their lives were before modern-day. The premise of the show was that there was
the Revolutionary War you read about in the history books, and then there was
another secret war going on, the whole time, that nobody knew about. Truly, the show could just be that, if we
wanted it to be, but I think we felt like it was really fun to use it as a
touch point to what was happening now, and tether the past to the present, so
that every time you have to solve a case or murder or kidnapping, or a weird
anything, the key to it is looking to the past, which then provides you with
these flashbacks. It’s difficult to
decide which is more fun to write, the past or the present. I think that is what makes it great.
KURTZMAN: With the past, you get to be a little bit
more literary and just use different words than you’re used to using in modern
verbiage. You put on a different hat and
you are able to articulate different things, and you can’t rely on some of the
gimmicks of modern storytelling, like a cell phone. People have to look each other in the eye,
and there’s just a different flavor to the whole thing that is a nice exercise
and a nice difference.
How
did ultimately make the jump from Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle to the Four
Horsemen?
KURTZMAN: The minute you have a headless horseman, that
seems like a rather ominous, powerful, and in our minds, biblical thing. So, when we were imagining what the next
chapter of Sleepy Hollow could be, not only in what happened in the past, but
in waking up in the future, we thought, “What if the Headless Horseman got a
little more connected than you ever imagined?”
Actually, he is only one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and it
was through the connection of the antagonist of the original short story that
we thought maybe that was the larger mythology that the original short story
could have been embedded in, and we ran with it from there.
ORCI: In an effort to say that we’re going to pay
homage to these beloved characters, but also add our own spin on them so that
they feel fresh, it led us to really ask questions about how we were going to
present these people. So, whereas Ichabod
Crane is described as a very bookish schoolteacher in the short story, the
truth is that we’ve seen that version already many, many times. Obviously, Johnny Depp played his own version
of that in the movie. So, to tip our
hats to the short story, we made him a professor at Oxford. We put it through the same filter with the
Horseman. The truth is, he is really
only described as a spectrum who haunts the woods, in the short story. What’s interesting is that he is described as
having lost his head from a cannonball.
That led us to thinking about the war, and that led us to thinking about
the premise of a secret war going on underneath it. One day, we were just sitting in a room and
someone said, “Well, what if he was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?” That really felt like, “Oh, my god, that’s
absolutely what you don’t expect,” but somehow it was that click you always
look for that feels exactly right and fits.
KURTZMAN: And that allows the show not to be the
Horseman chasing Ichabod Crane, every week.
It enters you into the world’s myths and religions, and the cast of
characters that populate these myths, as being on one side of good or evil, and
saying that all of the world’s religions are potentially a shadow of the truth
of a one world religion. We are going to
be able to explore lots of different cultural myths through this, and not have
it just be the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, every week.
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