Copyright © 2023 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.Starring Amanda Seyfried and Tom Holland, who is also an executive producer, The Crowded Room (premiering June 9 on Apple TV+) really puts the psychological in psychological thriller. Set in New York City in 1979, the story is told through a series of interviews with a curious interrogator named Rya (Seyfried) and a troubled young man named Danny (Holland), who is arrested following his involvement in a shooting. The entire cast deliver stellar performances, and Emmy Rossum is remarkable as Danny’s extremely complicated, memorable mother.
“I’m very interested in how the human mind works, and how we find ourselves,” writer Akiva Goldsman told us about his process creating this very unique show. “I think we end up in the same situations over and over again. We’re not here for very long, and you would think we would just seek out that which felt better. And yet sometimes we find ourselves in despair in the same way again and again. So for me, the character that Emmy plays is someone who is trapped by her own history. Her history is her destiny in a strange way. And much as she tries to escape that, she can’t. And of course, Emmy is a spectacular actress. She can see the weight of the character in her body. It’s pretty unique.”
At its core, the show is about trauma and the ways that even smaller ones can resurface in all sorts of ways. Through subtle cues and acute observations, the show and its characters investigate not only the crime committed but also the dark sides of human nature. “It’s really an exploration of how we end up doing things that other people might not understand, and how our childhood and our lives and our history all create these kinds of sets of responses and triggers and beliefs, which make us hard to understand from the outside,” Goldsman explained. “And here’s a young man who really struggles with a lot of the obstacles that we can face in life and survives. But the cost of his survival is very, very high.”
Danny’s character, while unique, is not unique in that he finds a way to deal with the things that have happened to him. Everyone on the show has flaws and the showrunners find artful ways to illustrate that no one is a saint.
“I also think it’s important today to remember that nobody copes perfectly. Somebody once said to me, ‘The thing about life is nobody gets out of it alive.’ And it’s true. It’s hard. As a culture, we can be really judgmental.”
The best thing, perhaps, about the show is its lack of judgment, and the honesty in the storytelling. For viewers who enjoy great dialogue and unpredictable narratives, this is a must-watch.
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