Tom Holland on The Crowded Room: it broke me, Im taking a year off
Back in December 2021, Tom Holland said that he wanted to take a little bit of a break from acting. It seems like that break didn’t last too long, appearing in the movie Uncharted in 2022 and now a TV series on Apple TV+ called The Crowded Room which was filmed in 2022. Now he’s saying he’s taking a break again, only this time, I think he means it. The reason? His role in The Crowded Room was so demanding that it “broke” him. I have to be honest, it doesn’t bode well if the lead actor is saying “this show broke me” while on the promotional circuit. Here’s what he told Extra about his experience making The Crowded Room:
The role scared him, but in a good way? “I just was terrified by the idea of playing this character, and for me that’s a really good thing, so I said yes,” Tom shared on what drew him to the role of Danny Sullivan, which is loosely based on infamous real-life criminal Billy Milligan.“I just was really excited by the challenge of bringing him to life. You know, understanding the responsibility of telling a story like this, hearing the message from Akiva [Goldsman], hearing what he wanted to try and achieve, and just feeling really aligned with him,” he said.
The process of making this show sounds kind of awful: “It was a tough time for sure. We were exploring certain emotions that I have definitely never experienced before, and then on top of that being a producer dealing with the day-to-day kind of problems that come with any film set added that extra level of pressure,” the actor said.“I love the learning curve of becoming a producer,” Tom continued. “I’m no stranger to hard work. I’ve always sort of lived by this idea that hard work is good work. I really enjoyed it, but then again, the show did break me. There did come a time where I was sort of like, ‘I need to have a break.’ I disappeared. I went to Mexico for a week and had some time on a beach. And I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was.”
He hopes his fans learn more about the power of the human mind from this show: “I hope that like me they can get the same education I got into how impressive the human mind is and to how far we can go in order to survive. I hope the fans come along for the ride we’ve laid out for them. There is a mystery with puzzle pieces. You can put it together yourself or you can just be along for the ride,” Tom said, adding that he looks forward to engaging with audiences as they watch.“I’m going to be very present online. I’m going to speak to fans and ask them what they think and see if they figured it out.”
I looked up the real person his character is based on, and it is a dark story. Billy Milligan was the first person in the United States with dissociative identity disorder to be acquitted of a crime because of his illness. He committed multiple felonies, including rapes, and is suspected of committing two murders. Dissociative identity disorder causes memory gaps, and so people who have it can go through phases where they don’t remember what they did in a different personality state. I understand completely why Tom is burned out. Trying to inhabit the mind of someone whose own identity is constantly changing, who did terrible things to other people but didn’t remember it…that would be hard. There are a lot of actors out there (cough, Jared Leto) who take the whole Method acting thing too far. But I think Tom was just emotionally exhausted.
Part of me also wonders, reading between the lines, if there were other reasons why Tom found the show so difficult to make beyond the subject matter. My spidey senses (sorry, I couldn’t resist) say that something else was amiss on set but I don’t know what. I watched the trailer and it all seems like a serviceable crime thriller, but Tom kind of gets lost in it. I think he’s naturally a super charismatic performer but it’s like he was directed to play the character very flat, without affect. It could just be how the trailer is cut. Maybe the reviews will change my mind but I think it’s probably not going to be that entertaining.
Photos credit: Darla Khazei / Avalon, Apple Press and Marion Curtis/StarPix for Apple/startraksphoto.com
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