When Sleepy Hollow premiers September 16, 2013, viewers are in for an interesting experience. You might be familiar with the classic tale of Ichabod Crane by Washington Irving, but you haven’t seen it like this.
The pilot of this series has a resurrected Ichabod Crane coming to life in modern times, over 250 years after he died. What makes this interesting is that Crane then joins forces with a police officer and together they try to figure out what is happening and what it all has to do with the Founding Fathers.
Sound interesting? Well, here is a little of what the show’s creators had to say about the show and their characters when they met with members of the Television Critics Association in July.
Executive Producer Mark Goffman first talked about the show. “I think there’s something really fun about taking the imagery that we already are familiar with, like the Headless Horseman, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, and then revising [them] in a way that’s something really new and fresh,” he explained to the room of journalists. “And that’s what I feel like there may be a trend towards, and this show really capitalizes on that well. We have a Headless Horseman. We have this legend of Ichabod Crane. Then, it’s reconceived in such a way that now there’s the Revolutionary War [element] and we just sort of pull back the veil. And everything you thought you know about the way our country was founded is completely blown apart.” So you could say that this show combines fantasy, history, and legendry.
The creators first decided to craft a modern-day Sleepy Hollow show particularly based on the Washington Irving short story. As Alex Kurtzman, Co-Creator and Executive Producer said, “It evokes and invokes a very specific feeling and tone.” And that is what viewers will see on their television sets. He added that because of the time travel element, it is a little ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and a little ‘Sleepy Hollow.’ How’s that for an interesting combination?
As Goffman explained about the Headless Horseman being part of the story, “The Horseman is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the evil that we’ll get to see on the show.” He went on to say, “One of the real fun elements of the show is getting to do these historic flashbacks and so we’ll get to understand a lot of his origin story as well.”
Then Len Wisemen, Co-Creator/Executive Producer/ Director, expanded on that aspect, saying that there were Four Horsemen of the apocalypse, and the headless guy is only one of them. “So the other three Horsemen are set up and [we] planned to be just as cool and just as fun and daunting as this guy.”
Sleepy Hollow brings the Revolutionary War period and characters into the 21st century. Ichabod died right before the United States became a country. He was fighting for the ideals and the rights put forth by the Founding Fathers. Then he wakes up in 2013 and what has become of the country? That in itself is an interesting element of this show. I often wonder what the Founding Fathers would think if they were able to come back for a day and see what was going on.
Co-Creator Phillip Iscove chimed into the conversation. “I wanted to do something with time travel that wasn’t time travel and I wanted to show a person that was out of time. And I felt like these … came together in a perfect blend.”
Explaining more about this story would take away from your viewing experience right now. Viewers will get their chance to weigh in on this when Sleepy Hollow premiers on FOX September 16, 2013.
