Emmy Rossum was recently announced as playing Tom Holland’s mother in the upcoming Apple TV+ anthology series The Crowded Room, which sparked a conversation online about the 35-year-old actress playing the mother of 25-year-old Tom Holland. And before anyone really knew what the series was going to entail, angry tweets began to fly about the casting. In reality, there should have been a note in the press releases, but apparently, Rossum will play Danny Sullivan’s (Holland) mother in flashbacks, for the most part.
The Crowded Room is going to be written and executive produced by Akiva Goldsman, with Holland also executive producing. Holland’s season will be ten episodes long and the first in the anthology, but the lack of information about the series is what caused a bit of confusion in the casting announcements. Roswell, New Mexico writer Carina Adly pointed out that the casting makes sense because of the use of flashbacks.
Twitter outrage
Exploring Danny Sullivan’s childhood trauma, the series will explore his early life and so having Emmy Rossum play his mother makes sense. The backlash is also kind of silly given that nearly every review of Uncharted commented on how Tom Holland seemed too young to even order a beer in the film, only for people to turn around and yell about him being too old to be Rossum’s son.
On the other hand, it’s not that there’s nothing of substance to the outrage, though it turned out to be misplaced in this case. Hollywood consistently prioritizes younger women in casting, even when it means pretending they’re older than they are, so the jump to think that they’re trying to tell us all that a 35-year-old woman looks old enough to have a 25-year-old son isn’t out of left field. But in this case, there was a clear lack of information being communicated.
What we know about The Crowded Room
The series is described as one that will “explore inspirational stories of those who have struggled, and learned to successfully live with, mental illness.” Holland’s season will follow Danny Sullivan, whose story is based on The Mind of Billy Milligan and Akiva Goldsman’s own history.
Sullivan, much like the real life Billy Milligan, has dissociative identity disorder (also known as DID), and the season is designed as a thriller (which fits in with the story of Milligan, who was the first man to be acquitted of a crime due to DID), but we don’t know much about Holland’s arc in the show.
The cast includes Holland, Rossum, Amanda Seyfried as a clinical psychologist trying to unpack Sullivan’s case, and Emma Laird, who is playing Danny’s high school girlfriend. So, while the casting of Rossum as Holland’s mother is a bit jarring without the information about the show, knowing that it will be mainly flashbacks should put fans at ease.
(image: Apple TV+/Showtime)
