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Jan 28, 2024

'The Crowded Room' Is Based on a Harrowing True Story

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Spider-Man star Tom Holland is flexing his acting muscles outside of the MCU and taking on a much darker role in his new project. The Crowded Room is a psychological drama series created for AppleTV+ by Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter best known for movies like A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code, based on the arrest of a man who stands accused of a terrible crime.

The story, which unfolds through a series of interviews with an interrogator played by The Dropout's Amanda Seyfried, is structured like a mystery, with revelations parsed out suspensefully as both Holland and Seyfried's characters get closer to the truth.

But if you're familiar with the source material behind the show, then you'll have a good idea of where all of this compelling drama is going.

The inspiration for the series came from the 1981 book The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes, a non-fiction novel which recounts the very real case of Billy Milligan, a man who was arrested for three rapes on the campus of a university, and who was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he was diagnosed with disassociative identity disorder (DID).

Milligan's lawyers argued that he was not the person responsible for his crimes, but rather two of his alternate personalities. This landmark case marked the first time that DID was used as part of a plaintiff's defense in a criminal court, and also the first time that it led to an acquittal.

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The Minds of Billy Milligan

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The Crowded Room takes much of its plot from Milligan's case and Keyes' book, however in the interest of dramatization, Goldsman changed some key details. In the series, Holland plays a man named Danny Sullivan, and the story is transposed from Columbus, Ohio to New York City.

Several key dates have also been changed, and it is likely that creative license has been taken in other aspects of the narrative, meaning that The Crowded Room should be very much viewed as a work of fiction, rather than an accurate portrayal of historical events.

The Crowded Room is now streaming on AppleTV+.

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