When Lyndie Greenwood dropped by the InStyle offices this morning, we were expecting to meet a stone-faced badass. The actress first caught our attention on The CW’s Nikita, where she played a whip-smart government head, and now stars as no-nonsense demon-fighter Jenny Mills on Fox’s sleeper hit Sleepy Hollow (Mondays at 9 p.
m. ET), a modern day spin on Washington Irving’s famed short story. “They described my role as a Sarah Connor-type,” she told us, referencing Linda Hamilton’s impressive turn in the Terminator films (coincidentally, Greenwood’s character also breaks out of a psychiatric hospital). Smiling from ear to ear and dressed in a sleek white fit and flare dress by Lorry Newhouse (a departure from her Mills’ go-to muscle T and sweats), the half Caribbean TV star talked our collective ears off about herself, her character (now a series regular!), and what it’s like onset. Here are seven facts we gleaned:1. The show’s Wilmington, North Carolina set is kind of spooky. “One night I was onset talking to [co-star] Orlando [Jones] near the trailers, and all of a sudden this tiny monster acolyte thing started running past me,” Greenwood said. “Another time I heard my name being called, and no one was there.”
2. She and co-star Katia Winter are roommates. “I swear our house is haunted—and it doesn’t help that she pranks me all the time and scares me a lot!”
3. She loves to run outside. “If I don’t do it, I get restless,” she said. “I do 30-minute-long runs outside where the terrain is varied, and I do Pilates-based exercises, too.
”4. But she also practiced Kung Fu for 10 years. “I was in the midst of finishing the second level of the three-level system at the Mantis Kung Fu school I went to in Toronto,” she said. “It’s the equivalent of a black belt.”
5. She recently adopted a rescue puppy. The Labrador-Pit Bull mix is named Arroway (Arrow for short!) after the lead character from Contact, Ellie Arroway. “She was found in a ditch in South Carolina, and I cleaned her with Dawn dish detergent,” Greenwood said.
6. She threads her own eyebrows. “It hurts a lot,” she admitted. “It’s hard to do at first, but then you get the hang of it.”
7. Sleepy Hollow season two will be action-packed. Although Greenwood remained tight-lipped on the upcoming season, she shared a few spoilers: “There’s a bit of action in the first episode, and there’s definitely going to be more later in this season. There will be new characters and new monsters. It’ll be insanity, as usual.”
Learn all about Jenny Mills in the clip below, and tune into Fox tonight at 9 p.m. ET for Sleepy Hollow‘s season two premiere!