FOX's 'Sleepy Hollow' pilot casts female lead, Orlando Jones, 'Dexter' actress

Rather than living in the past, FOX's contemporary reimagining of Sleepy Hollow is going all-out to bring the classic American legend into the 21st century with a diverse multicultural cast announced so far.

Nicole Beharie, an up-and-coming young actress who has guest-starred on CBS's The Good Wife and NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, has been tapped for the female lead, a detective in Sleepy Hollow named Abbie Archer.

As she is preparing to leave town to attend the FBI Academy, Abbie witnesses the brutal murder of someone close to her, but her story can only be corroborated by one person — a man by the name of Ichabod Crane.

A veteran of film and television, Orlando Jones has landed the role of Lt. Frank Williams in the supernatural drama. Lt. Williams is transferred to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a double homicide and takes his job as a police detective extremely seriously.

After starting his career as a writer on NBC's A Different World, Jones was an original cast member on FOX's late-night sketch show MADtv and has appeared in several movies and TV series over the years. He also has a regular role on the ABC midseason comedy How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life), scheduled to premiere on April 3.

Swedish actress Katia Winter is another addition to the Sleepy Hollow cast, playing the wife of Ichabod Crane. Named Katrina, the character is described as a nurse with the 37th Regiment in the Revolutionary War. Best known for playing the recurring role of Ukrainian stripper Nadia on Showtime's Dexter, Winter also guest-starred on an episode of NCIS.

In this modern-day supernatural adaptation of Washington Irving's 1820 tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane joins forces with Detective Abbie Archer to solve the mysteries of Sleepy Hollow, a town ravaged by the ongoing war between good and evil. Executive producer Len Wiseman, director of the first two Underworld movies and the recent Total Recall remake, has signed on to helm the pilot.

Since the show is set in current times, I'm not sure if the information about Crane's wife was just gleaned from the original character or if time travel or alternate timelines are involved — Fringe co-creators and Star Trek writers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman partnered with Phillip Iscove to pen the project, after all.

Are you interested in a Grimm-like updating of Sleepy Hollow?