Tom Holland is taking a year off after exhausting experience making The Crowded Room

Tom Holland may have happily swung from the tallest buildings and plundered ancient treasure, but the emotional toll of The Crowded Room was so gruelling that the actor has decided to take a full year off.

The psychological thriller series is set to debut on Apple TV+ on Friday and Tom Holland spoke with Extra about how the experience led to him needing time off. “It was it was a tough time for sure. 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 kind of problems that come with any film set added that extra level of pressure,” Holland said. “I love the learning curve of becoming a producer. I’m no stranger to hard work. I’ve always sort of lived by this idea that hard work is good work. I really enjoyed it, but then again, the show did break me. There did come a time where I was sort of like, ‘I need to have a break.’ I disappeared. I went to Mexico for a week and had some time on a beach. And I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was.“

Based on the nonfiction book The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes, The Crowded Room stars Tom Holland as Danny Sullivan, “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.” Despite needing some time off to decompress from the role, Holland was really happy with how the series changed him as an actor.

I feel very confident in my capabilities as an actor. I feel like I can handle confrontation better. I feel like I can deal with certain situations that I think before would have really set me off and now I just take it in my stride. I feel like I’ve grown up a lot, perhaps more so in the 10 months of making this show than I have in my entire career. It definitely feels like the beginning of the next chapter, and I feel really good. I’m really happy.

Our own Alex Maidy singled out praise for Tom Holland in his review of The Crowded Room, saying that he’s “astounding” in the series. The first three episodes of The Crowded Room will debut on Apple TV+ on June 9th, with the remaining seven episodes released weekly, concluding on July 28th.