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The Crowded Room: the true story behind role that 'broke' Tom Holland

Will you be watching the new Apple TV+ show The Crowded Room? 

Tom Holland plays Danny in the new show
Emmy Griffiths
TV & Film Editor
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The Crowded Room has finally landed on Apple TV+, and follows Tom Holland as a young man named Danny who is arrested after his friend Ariana open fires a gun in New York City before disappearing. The role, which was inspired by a true story, had a huge impact on the Spider-Man actor, who announced plans to take a year off from acting after the tough shoot. So what is the true story behind the new show? 

Warning, spoilers ahead about potential twists in the show. 

Who was Billy Milligan and what happened to him?

The Crowded Room is inspired by the 1981 non-fiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan, which follows the story of Billy, the first person in US history to be acquitted of a major crime due to dissociative identity disorder. The American, who died in 2014 aged 59, was arrested for armed robbery and rape in the late 1970s. Following his arrest, he was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, with his lawyers pleading insanity. 

WATCH: Catch the trailer for The Crowded Room

He was committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he had multiple personalities including an Englishman named Arthur, a manipulative man named Allen, an escape artist named Tommy and a Yugoslav communist named Raged Vadasovinich. 

Billy Milligan's story inspired The Crowded Room© Netflix
Billy Milligan's story inspired The Crowded Room

Billy escaped the psychiatric hospital in 1986, during which time his friend and roommate Michael Madden went missing. While Billy was never arrested for any crime, Michael was never found. The mystery is the subject of the Netflix documentary, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan. He was eventually released from psychiatric care after a decade in the system, and moved in with his sister in 2012, two years before he died from cancer in 2014. 

Billy Milligan has multiple personalities © Netflix
Billy Milligan had multiple personalities

Why has Tom Holland taken a break from acting? 

Speaking about how he needed a break after filming The Crowded Room, Tom said: "I’m no stranger to hard work. I’ve lived by the idea that hard work is good work. Then again, the show did break me. 

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'There did come a time where I needed a break and disappeared and went to Mexico for a week and had time on a beach and laid low. I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was. I am excited to see how it turns out. I feel like our hard work wasn’t in vain.

Tom Holland stars in the new show The Crowded Room
Tom Holland stars in the new show The Crowded Room

He added: "It was a tough time, for sure. We were exploring certain emotions that I have definitely never experienced before." 

He explained in more detail how the role took a toll on him to Entertainment Weekly explaining: "I was seeing myself in him but in my personal life. 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’d ever experienced before.

The actor is taking a break from acting after the role
The actor is taking a break from acting after the role

The 27-year-old added: "I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job, doing the whole action-movie thing. 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." 

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