‘The Crowded Room’: Tom Holland & Amanda Seyfried Break Down That Mind-Bending Twist (VIDEO)
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Crowded Room Season 1 Episode 7 “The Crowded Room.”]
The Crowded Room has been racing toward a major twist that some viewers may not have expected, and it comes in the latest installment.
While Danny Sullivan’s (Tom Holland) underlying traumas have been simmering under the surface, the dam breaks in the aptly titled “The Crowded Room,” revealing that many of the people filling his life are, in fact, alters in his mind. That’s right: Ariana (Sasha Lane), Yitzak (Lior Raz), Jonny (Levon Hawke), Mike (Sam Vartholomes), and Jack (Jason Isaacs) are all different personalities that Danny inhabits as someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder in the show.
(Credit: Apple TV+)
And Rya isn’t merely an investigator trying to uncover the truth behind a shooting Danny committed; rather, she’s actually a psychologist eager to determine the young man’s diagnosis. “There’s a professionality that needs to be present, and she needs to feel like she’s somebody he can trust right off the bat,” Seyfried says of her character’s approach, especially withholding the secret of her true motives.
“You have to be very gentle and patient in order to get information,” she adds about Rya’s efforts to peel back the layers of Danny’s story and experience. To prepare for her role, the actress says, “I learned a lot about…how therapists speak to their patients.” Seyfried gets candid, adding that when visiting and talking to her own therapist, she “was actually like shadowing her without her knowing when I was talking to her.”
The first time that Rya witnesses Danny’s alters surface through Holland “was fascinating. It was unpredictable,” Seyfried shares. “I mean, I knew what his lines were ’cause I’d read the script, but I didn’t know how he was gonna play that.”
The experience was just as intense for Holland, who likens it to “a drama school exercise, you know, where we’re on set or we’re off set and we’re doing some prep work and we’d just be running scenes.” When it came to taking on the personas of his costars’ characters, Holland says, “I was so lucky that all of my co-stars were so game for this kind of experiment.”
See what else Holland and Seyfried have to say about the show’s latest turn in the full video interview, above.
The Crowded Room, Fridays, Apple TV+
