The success of Fox’s “Sleepy Hollow,” which kicked off the fall season and immediately connected with an audience, seems to hang on the velvet-clad shoulders of British actor Tom Mison.
Cast as fish-out-of-water as Ichabod Crane, a Revolutionary War soldier who finds himself at loose ends — and running from the Headless Horseman in contemporary Westchester, Mison, 31, has the kind of dry wit and charm that makes you wonder why it took so long for American TV producers to find him.
He was busy doing theatre in London for one thing and didn’t immediately want to join the parade of British actors (Hugh Laurie, Damian Lewis) revved up for American TV salaries and stardom.
“I didn’t want to be someone who rushes over to LA at the first opportunity. I wanted to have something to show for myself,” he says.
That project was “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” an indie comedy starring Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor, which got some good reviews and the right kind of exposure for Mison. Still, he returned to London and did plays and highbrow miniseries such as “Parade’s End.” Next time Hollywood came calling, they wanted Mison on-set immediately.
The part was Ichabod Crane.
Mison put himself on tape in London and was flown to America for a screen test with his ultimate co-star Nicole Beharie. It lasted five hours, he says.
“She was only in it for three hours,” he says. “The producers had made up their minds and they just wanted to show Fox why they picked me.”
Because his hair hadn’t grown to Revolutionary War lengths, Mison slapped a wig on his head and reported for duty as the arrogant Crane, whose observations about American life from an 18th century point of view — “I see you’re emancipated,” he says to Beharie, who plays a detective — lighten the Gothic gloom of the crime-filled plot.
“Even Hamlet has the odd gag in it,” Mison says.
Since then, he’s barely had time to date, let alone pick a favorite football team for the gridiron season, but as someone living in Wilmington, NC — where “Sleepy Hollow” films — he feels he must do that.
“I’ve narrowed it down to the Carolina Panthers, the San Francisco 49ers and the Washington Redskins,” he says. “I may go with Redskins because I had a redskin cap when I was 10.”
Getting accustomed to American TV — and the ardor of its fans — has also taken some getting used to. Mison says that within days of the series premiere, viewers were sending him “art work.”
“The fan art has been rather flattering. People have been drawing things and posting them online,” he says. “We have very talented fans. I believe they’re already referring to themselves as Sleepy Heads.”
Mison did have one connection to North Carolina when he settled in. His roommate from his drama school days at the Webber-Douglas Academy in London is also working there, in Charlotte, filming the Emmy-winning “Homeland” — Rupert Friend, who plays Agent Peter Quinn on the Showtime drama and lived with Mison for four years.
“We were in the same class at drama school,” Mison says. “We made a short film together called ‘The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers.’ It’s what you do when you’re an unemployed actor. You get a bottle of whiskey at 2 in the morning and you come up with an idea.
“But the film got made,” he says. “It was really a beautiful bohemian life. Or it seemed beautiful at the time.”
While Friend battles America’s present enemies on “Homeland,” Mison will take on the country’s old enemies — the British.
“As we go through the season, there are more looks back to the Revolutionary War,” he says. “The Boston Tea Party. The ride of Paul Revere. It’s a fascinating period, but we don’t learn about that at school [in England]. Obviously, we don’t like talking about the war we lost.”