John Noble Returns to ‘Sleepy Hollow’ (PHOTO)

John Noble and Tom Mison in Sleepy Hollow
FOX
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Sleepy Hollow’s Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) finds himself on trial in the January 27 episode of the Fox drama—and his estranged son, Henry (John Noble, far left, with Mison), who died in Season 2, mysteriously resurfaces as the lawyer trying him. The charge: dereliction of duty as a Witness, including the responsibility to protect his companions in the war against evil. “Henry is a wonderful lawyer, cross-examining and accusing,” Noble says.

Though death can often be the start of a character’s real story on Sleepy Hollow, Noble’s return was far from a sure thing. After he left the Fox drama, Noble was a regular on CBS’ Elementary, and the expectation was that the arc was over. But then Mison and Noble reconnected in London at a comic convention, “and [we] just started to toss around the idea of ‘Wouldn’t it be great?'” Noble recalls. “Tom got excited and begged me to come back, and I was like, ‘Sure, to do work with you, I’d love to.’ He took that to the powers that be, and after that [it came together]. It’s wonderful to get back, because I know so many of the crew. It was sort of a homecoming. Though, none of the cast was from my time there, aside from Lyndie [Greenwood] and Tom.”

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Noble’s first episode (he will be back later this season) was filled with plenty of time acting opposite Mison. “I think he is so terrific,” gushes Noble. But it took a moment for the actor to find his character again after his time away. “Being back there, I was like, ‘Who am I playing? Is this [Fringe‘s] Walternate?’ So I had to dig back and go, I remember now: ‘Hello, Father.’ Little keywords bring me back into it again.”

Sleepy Hollow, Fridays, 9/8c, Fox