Tom Holland's complex role in The Crowded Room changed how he views his mental health

After a quick turnaround from Uncharted treasure hunter Nathan Drake back to everyone's favorite web-slinger in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland was looking forward to a much-needed break when, all of a sudden, his phone rang.

"My agent called me up and said, 'This guy, Akiva Goldsman, would like to talk to you,'" he tells EW. "'It sounds like your dreams are coming true.'"

For ages, the 26-year-old had been telling his team to be "on the prowl" for a project like Edward Norton's 1996 legal drama Primal Fear. So, when Goldsman pitched him the premise of what would become the 10-episode psychological thriller The Crowded Room (which premieres on Apple TV+ on June 9), Holland's interest was instantly piqued. He signed on not only as its star, but also as an executive producer without seeing any official scripts.

Inspired by a true story, and based on the 1981 novel The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Crowded Room follows Danny Sullivan (Holland), a shy, anti-social teen from Upstate New York who is arrested after a shooting at the Rockefeller Center in 1979. Through a series of discussions with investigator Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried), Danny comes to better understand his own mental health, the people in his life, and the tragic events that led up to the incident.

Holland describes The Crowded Room as "an insight into the power of the human mind" and "the ways in which we can deal with trauma."

"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," he continues. "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."

When it came to casting, Goldsman, who serves as showrunner, writer, and executive producer on the series, said that Holland was "the first and only person" he spoke to about playing Danny. "He took this character to heart. It was an unbelievably challenging piece," he tells EW. "We shot 130 days in a row. In New York. During COVID. And Tom held the center of it in a way that makes the piece work because he's so compassionate and compelling and his conviction in the role is extraordinary. I'm excited for him, because I don't think people have seen him this way."

"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 says. "I really enjoyed playing Danny in those earlier episodes where I was able to lean into my more vulnerable side."

While the series takes pages from Milligan's life, Holland notes that "we just felt like it was a more appropriate story to tell from a fictional point of view" rather than a direct approach. (Milligan was arrested for rape, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping in 1979.) "For me, it was about really creating empathy — to create a character that you would really ally with," Goldsman adds. "That you would feel connected to and so his journey would become the audience's journey."

Piecing together the mystery at the heart of the series, however, proved a bit more challenging. "It's a serialized 10-hour piece but it moves around. The point of view moves around. The sort of narrative frame moves around, so it lets you get a little jolt of seeing things new," Goldsman says. "And so the process of making it was really interesting, because, like so many things, it has a form in script, it has a form when it's being shot, and it finds another form in post-production. Each one is its own adventure in finding the puzzle."

Although fictional, stepping into such heavy subject material took a real personal toll on Holland. "I'm no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing," he admits. "But the mental aspect, it really beat me up and it took a long time for me to recover afterwards, to sort of get back to reality."

Holland recalls one moment when, after nine months of filming, he found himself unable to detach from Danny. "I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life," he explains. "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.' And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to… It was unlike anything I've ever experienced before."

Thankfully, Holland could lean on costars like Sasha Lane, who plays Danny's friend and roommate Ariana, for guidance and support. "She was so helpful for me, because there were moments on set where I really was struggling to understand Danny's reasoning or Danny's actions," he says. "She would take me aside and was really open and willing to share some of her experiences that were so helpful in the moment."

Being part of the series also caused Holland, who is one year and four months sober, to shift how he views his own mental health. "Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about Danny and Billy's struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life," he says, especially when it comes to "recognizing triggers" and "things that stress me out" like social media.

His wish is that, through The Crowded Room, viewers will "have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues," adding, "I hope that people will feel educated about the powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive."

The Crowded Room also stars Emmy Rossum as Danny's mom, Candy, Will Chase as his step-father, Marlin, and Sam Vartholomeos and Levon Hawke as his pals Mike and Johnny, respectively. The first three episodes of the series land on Apple TV+ on June 9, with the following seven airing weekly afterward.

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