Emmy Rossum Explains Why Playing Tom Holland’s Mom in The Crowded Room ‘Makes Sense’

While Emmy Rossum is a bit too young to be Tom Holland‘s mother in real life, she has been cast in that role in the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room. Set to start streaming on June 9, the series stars Holland as Danny Sullivan, a real-life criminal struggling with dissociative identity disorder. Sullivan was acquitted of several serious crimes after his attorneys successfully argued that it was his alternate personalities that were perpetrating them. That story was chronicles in the book The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes, which inspired Akiva Goldsman to adapt it for The Crowded Room.

Also featured in the series is Rossum as Danny’s mother Candy. In real life, Rossum is 36, while Holland just turned 27 days ago. In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, Rossum commented on the how she’s only a decade older than Holland in real life. She explained how that had no bearing on her casting, as the characters the two are playing are obviously not their real-life ages. As Rossum also says, the real Candy Sullivan was very young when she became pregnant with Danny, so that makes it more plausible that she wouldn’t look all that much older.

“It makes sense when I read the script,” the Shameless star said. “Candy’s a super young mom, she’s almost a child in her own right when she becomes pregnant at age 16. You watch as I age from 25 to 35, which is actually younger than I am now.”

fell in love with the relationship between mother and son and the closeness and everything that they’re grieving in later episodes.”

It’s worth noting that a younger actor plays Danny in the scenes where Rossum’s character is in her 20s, as child actor Zachary Golinger plays the kid version of Holland’s role. Rossum gave high praise to her young co-star, feeling proud of those scenes she filmed with Golinger.

“I was so taken with the series and really just loved all my scenes, especially with young Danny,” she said. “Our relationship was so beautiful and so I knew everything that we had that I had lost in the scenes with Tom. [It] was really fun.”

Related: The Crowded Room: Plot, Cast, Release Date, and Everything Else We Know

Tom Holland Takes on the Many Minds of Danny Sullivan

The Crowded Room is set in Manhattan during the summer of 1979. That’s when Danny Sullivan was arrested for a shocking crime, and it’s up to an unlikely investigator to figure out what happened. Along with Holland, Rossum, and Golinger, the series stars Amanda Seyfried (The Dropout), Will Chase (Nashville), Sasha Lane (Loki), Christopher Abbott (Possessor), Emma Laird (Mayor of Kingstown), and Jason Isaacs (The State Within).

Akiva Goldsman created the series, which consists of ten episodes. It is a co-production between Apple Studios and New Regency. Goldsman executive produces with Holland, Suzanne Heathcote, Alexandra Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, Kornel Mundruczo, and Michael Schaefer.

The Crowded Room debuts on Apple TV+ on June 9, 2023.