The Crowded Room: Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried Star in a Thrilling New Series

Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried are starring in a new Apple original series, The Crowded Room.

The Crowded Room is a psychological thriller series based on the felon Billy Milligan. The series is based on the novel The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes and is directed by Akiva Goldsman of A Beautiful Mind. The trailer was released earlier in the month.

Tom Holland expressed his excitement for the series on Instagram, asking fans to be “part of the mystery.”

Billy Milligan was a criminal who underwent a public trial in 1979 after he raped three women and was arrested on accounts of robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault. According to The Columbus Dispatch, Milligan suffered from dissociative identity disorder. Tom Holland will embody the role of Danny Sullivan in The Crowded Room, which is loosely based on Milligan. According to Entertainment Weekly, Sullivan will reflect on his own mental health following his arrest during a shooting. Holland himself described the series as “an insight into the power of the human mind.”

However, Sullivan is only loosely based on Milligan. While it takes inspiration from aspects of Milligan’s life, Sullivan’s character is highly fictionalized, limiting the similarities between the two. According to Goldsman, she wanted to create a character that was complicated and “that you would feel connected to and so his journey would become the audience’s journey.”

The narrative of the series is told largely through interrogative interviews conducted by Amanda Seyfried’s character Rya Goodwin. Through this, Sullivan’s story develops, and his trauma is unleashed. While it is set up to be an engaging series, Holland emphasized the strain the role put on him.

According to Variety, Holland recalled his experience portraying this role, explaining that he remembers ” having a bit of a meltdown at home and thinking, like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head because I need to get rid of this character.’ And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to… It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

Apple TV’s official Twitter even called it “Tom Holland’s most tangled web yet.”

The Crowded Room will be available to stream exclusively on Apple TV on June 9.

Ava Dela Pena

Writer | Tweet me @avadlpn