Back in 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio was reportedly gearing up to star in a project that he’d long-since longed to bring to the screen. That would be The Crowded Room, then envisioned as a film and which adapted Daniel Keyes’ true-crime book, The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Crowded Room. DiCaprio would have played Milligan, the first defendant to be found not guilty by successfully using dissociative identity disorder as a legal defense. The crimes in question included a 1970s robbery and multiple counts of rape.
That film never happened, and Apple TV+ has now adapted this story as a fictionalized version of events in a series created by Akiva Goldsman (who won an Oscar for his A Beautiful Mind screenplay). Tom Holland now plays “Danny Sullivan,” who is arrested in connection with a late 1970s shooting, and he recently told Entertainment Weekly that he had a “meltdown” after “thinking like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head because I need to get rid of this character.’” From the looks of the above trailer, it’s pretty clear why he felt that way. From the synopsis:
“The Crowded Room” follows ‘Danny Sullivan’ (Holland), a man who is arrested following his involvement in a shooting in New York City in 1979. A captivating thriller told through a series of interviews with curious interrogator ‘Rya Goodwin’ (Amanda Seyfried), Danny’s life story unfolds, revealing elements of the mysterious past that shaped him, and the twists and turns that will lead him to a life-altering revelation.
Apple TV+’s The Crowded Room co-stars Amanda Seyfried, Emmy Rossum, Sasha Lane, and Lior Raz and premieres on June 9.