FoxStill scratching your head about the idea that Bones and Sleepy Hollow are merging worlds? Don't worry, because the stars of the shows were also very confused about tonight's crossover event.
Tom Mison, a.k.a. dreamboat Revolutionary War time traveler Ichabod Crane, admits he did not respond well to the initial pitch. "I thought no, that's a terrible idea! Of course that won't work," he tells E! News while in Los Angeles filming scenes for the Bones half of the night. "They seem like very, very different universes, and then I read the scripts and it actually fits in seamlessly. It's much like when I was given the pilot. When I heard Sleepy Hollow is turning into a TV show in the current day, guy dies and comes back to life 200 years later, I thought no, terrible idea. And actually it worked out quite nicely. I'm clearly really s--t at judging!"
David Boreanaz, a.k.a. recently reinstated FBI agent Seeley Booth, thought the same thing. "I didn't quite get it. And even when I read the scripts I wanted to change the relationships and the scenes and have more character-driven [things] because I react better to that kind of stuff," he tells E!. "That's what our show is about. So once I got that down and started playing that, that's when I really got it. With a read you can't get it, but when you play it, you can actually see it. It makes sense."
So how does it all come together? Let Mison explain: "In the Bones episode, they discover a 200-year-old corpse with no head. And because Abbie is now a member of the FBI, she hears about it and of course we make our assumptions. That's what takes us to Washington and into the Bones episode, and through the course of that episode they have their own case and Ichabod and Abbie just want to bring the headless corpse back to Sleepy Hollow. We want to take their evidence. At the beginning of our episode, something happens to that corpse and we realize it isn't the Headless Horseman, it's someone from Ichabod's past. Dun dun dun! And then it all becomes very Sleepy Hollow and they throw everything and the kitchen sink at it."
As the four characters team up to learn more about the corpse, they'll split up into pairs, Booth and Mills and Brennan and Crane. It makes for some unexpected dynamics, but Boreanaz says it works. "[Booth] sees Crane as a squint, and he relates to Abbie in that they both have squints they have to deal with. He sees her as someone he can mentor in understanding what the FBI is like and balancing the life that they have character-wise while working. Me, married my partner. Have kids. Her, still budding, trying to figure out what this partner is," he says. "Is there something more there than just work?"
Brennan and Crane might actually be too alike, Mison says. "Ichabod and Brennan are so similar in their logic, they're particularly anal, and they're quite gauche. I think it works beautifully," he says.
Does it work well for a new ship? Mison has some ideas for names: "Cranan. Ichabrennan. I'm not very good at shipping names. I'm not very good at judging scripts or shipping names. It's out of my hands. I thought Crane and Abbie would be Crabbie, but luckily not. Luckily it's less venereal disease."
The scene Mison and Boreanaz are filming during our visit to set takes place in catacombs underneath Washington, D.C., something Boreanaz is familiar with. "Now we're in their world, tombs and stuff. This is a little bit strange. It's funny, because when I did Angel that's all we did! I'm very familiar with that world," he says with a laugh. "In Buffy and Angel we must have crawled through many tunnels, I think maybe every tunnel in Los Angeles. I swear to god. Some you don't want to go down."
These? Not so bad. At least they're on a stage. "Yes, that's good," he says. "It's clean. It smells a little bit better."
The two-hour crossover airs Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. on Fox.