This article discusses mental disorders
Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried will star in a new 10-episode psychological thriller based on the true story of Billy Milligan, a troubled young man who made history when he became the first person in America to be let off for a major crime after successfully pleading dissociative identity disorder related insanity.
Fans of Split (2016), The Father (2020) and Primal Fear (1996) are likely to enjoy this unsettling Apple TV+ offering: the miniseries will explore Milligan’s mental health issues.
“It’s a show that will take you on twists and turns — you’ll never know where you are or what’s going on — and then it will all come to a miraculous conclusion toward the end,” said Holland to Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a story about heartbreak. It’s a story about love. It’s a story about betrayal. And, most of all, it’s a story about a young kid’s determination to survive.”
The Crowded Room promises to be a fascinating take on a topic that caused major debate in the Seventies. Here’s everything there is to know about the series, which is set to be released on Friday.
What is it about?
Set in Manhattan in 1979, the show is built around a series of discussions between investigator Rya Goodwin (Seyfried) and Danny Sullivan (Holland), who has been picked up by the police for committing a “shocking crime”. As Goodwin questions Sullivan, she comes to understand that he is a much more complicated character than he first seems.
It’s based on a true story
The series is based on the 1981 non-fiction book The Minds of Billy Milligan, by award-winning American writer Daniel Keyes. The book details the true story of Milligan, a young man who was arrested for seemingly perpetrating numerous crimes including rape and armed robbery.
Milligan’s story became national news when doctors diagnosed him with acute schizophrenia and then dissociative identity disorder. He underwent an onslaught of examinations, including IQ and ECG tests, where his brain function reportedly varied from being highly functioning, even bordering on that of a genius, to low functioning like a child.
His defense team subsequently pleaded insanity, and were successful. He spent the following decade or so in psychiatric hospitals before being released.
The case became a major talking point in the Seventies: some believed Milligan had been faking his diagnosis as a cunning scheme to avoid prison time, while others were pleased to finally see the courts take account of mental health in its sentencing.
Who does it star?
According to EW, Holland was the only person that creator Goldsman spoke to about playing the role of Danny.
Holland had reportedly (and rather specifically) been looking for a project similar to the 1996 thriller Primal Fear, which starred Edward Norton and which was about the trial of a young man accused of murder, who is later found to have dissociative identity disorder. Holland was apparently so enthusiastic about the project that he joined The Crowded Room before seeing official scripts, signing up as its executive producer as well as its star.
“I’ve spent so long playing Nathan Drake and playing Spider-Man, who are characters that you can depend on, people you feel safe around, and, ultimately, people that feel really capable,” Holland said to EW. “I really enjoyed playing Danny in those earlier episodes where I was able to lean into my more vulnerable side.”
However, taking on such a complicated character didn’t come without its own difficulties. After several months of filming, Holland found himself entangled in Danny: “I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life,” he said to EW. “I remember 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’.”
The series also stars Seyfried, in her first role since playing Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in last year’s Hulu series The Dropout. Fauda star Lior Raz, Will Chase (Madam Secretary) Emmy Rossum (Shameless) and Sasha Lane (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) also star.
When is it being released?
Three episodes of The Crowded Room will drop on Apple TV+ on June 9. After that, episodes will be released week by week.
Who has made it?
American filmmaker Akiva Goldsman, who produced I Am Legend and The Dark Tower, and who wrote I, Robot, The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and Transformers: The Last Knight is the creator, writer, and executive producer of the series.
Seyfried’s husband, Thomas Sadoski, also features in the series
Seyfried’s husband, American actor Thomas Sadoski, also features in The Crowded Room.
The actor, who married Seyfried in 2017, has previously starred in the HBO series The Newsroom, and in the CBS sitcom Life in Pieces. Sadoski plays character Matty Dunn in the series, though it’s not yet clear what this role entails.
Speaking to Page Six about having her husband on set, Seyfried said: “It was actually really nice... Because it was in the beginning when I was a little insecure. I felt like it was always nice to check in with him and see if I was doing a good job.”
“I wasn’t with her every single day on set,” said Sadoski to Page Six. “So for me, it was fun to show up, and for her, I think it was like a breath of fresh air to have someone away from the really heavy serious stuff she was doing with Tom [Holland] so I think it worked out really well for both of us.”
Holland said that his girlfriend Zendaya “put up with a lot”.
Speaking to Radio Times about transforming into Danny Sullivan, Holland said that for the first time in his career, he sometimes found it difficult to stop his work from bleeding into his life.
“The Crowded Room, it’s 10 months of playing this character, day in and day out,” he said. “I really did find myself kind of morphing with him in certain moments.”
“And also I had the bangs. Bless Zendaya, she had a lot to put up with, with me looking like that for 10 months, it was rough.”
Milligan was also featured in a docu-series by Netflix
Milligan also became the subject of a four-part Netflix docuseries titled Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan in 2021, which seemed to question the validity of his insanity claim.
In a 2021 article titled “Did Billy Milligan use his 24 personalities to get away with murder?” The Telegraph said, “Yet his case would prove unsettlingly strange. Its legacy would test the US legal system, push the limits of criminal psychiatry – and probe the unfathomable capacity of the human mind.”
The docuseries’ director, Olivier Megaton, who made Taken 2 and Taken 3, said to Movie Maker that he wanted to focus on the victims of Milligan’s crimes before exploring his story.
“I decided to begin with the rapes just to have the audience keeping in mind that he raped, from what we know, four girls in 10 days,” he said. “I wanted to talk about his social and his trauma condition and so on for sure, but at the very beginning, I just wanted to have everybody thinking, ‘What about the victims?’”
