Tom Holland On “Animosity” On Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’: “It Was Not A Very Harmonious Place”

Tom Holland is opening up about working on the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room and revealing that “it was not a very harmonious place.”

The Spider-Man: No Way Home actor recalled working in the series where he starred alongside Amanda Seyfried and Emmy Rossum amid his sobriety journey.

“There was quite a lot of animosity on that set. It was not a very harmonious place, and there was a lot of arguing and butting heads,” Holland said in an interview with Men’s Health.

Holland said the disagreements were not creative differences with the publication, noting that the actor said he welcomed them, even if they were heated. Working in such an environment made Holland think about breaking his sobriety.

“I thought, If I start drinking again now, with all this going on, it’s gonna get worse, right?” he said.

Holland noted he was “quite strong-willed” on his sobriety journey and added, “I leaned on close ones a lot: family, friends, old colleagues, new colleagues, people that reached out that I didn’t know who also were sober.”

The Crowded Room is a 10-episode limited series about a man who is arrested following his involvement in an NYC shooting in 1979. In the psychological thriller, Holland plays Danny Sullivan, a character based on Billy Mulligan, a man known as The Campus Rapist and the subject of a highly publicized court case in the late 1970s.

Holland’s comments about working in The Crowded Room come after the actor revealed in 2023 that he was taking a break from acting after wrapping filming for the show.

“It was a tough time, for sure,” Holland said during an interview with Extra. “We were exploring certain emotions that I have definitely never experienced before. And then on top of that, being a producer, dealing with the day-to-day problems that come with any film set, just added that extra level of pressure.”