The Crowded Room is a story of intrigue, compassion, cruelty, and tenacity. The new Apple TV+ limited series has all the elements of a standout thriller, but the show is just as much about motherhood as it is about action stunts. Set in 1979 New York City, The Crowded Room follows Danny Sullivan (Tom Holland), a young man who must come to terms with his actions after being involved in a violent crime. Along the way, the audience encounters Danny’s mother, Candy Sullivan, played by Emmy Rossum, and Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried), an investigator and recently divorced mother who is trying to find the balance between work and home.
In Rossum’s character, the audience sees an imperfect mother who is overworked and underpaid, trying to find her way in a world that isn’t necessarily built for her best interests. In flashback scenes, Candy is a 25-year-old single mom who works multiple jobs, including waitressing at a bar and working at a hospital. Although she loves her son, Candy has demanding bosses who require her to work long hours, while receiving little to no support from family or friends. For Rossum, the role of Candy felt very personal. The actress tells Shondaland that she learned she was pregnant with her second child during the filming of the last two episodes, a revelation that influenced her performance.
“[Filming the show] brought up so much for me,” Rossum says during a recent interview, “as a young mom myself — I had a 1-year-old when we were shooting this and dealing with this kind of subject matter. [I also learned] while we were shooting episode nine and 10 that I was pregnant with my now-son. I think it brings up a lot about how imperfect we are as people. About how we may always try our best, but ultimately, we worry about the blind spots that we have — the ways in which we might be hurting or failing the people that we love the most. And I think to have empathy for ourselves and those who are different from us, I think it resonated for me on a lot of levels.”
Throughout the series, Candy struggles to see how Danny, once a sweet and sensitive child, transforms into a man who is arrested for a shooting at Rockefeller Center. Although she tries her best to protect him, Candy cannot save Danny from the ills that beset him. According to Rossum, Candy is very much “a victim of her own circumstances” who is “limited in terms of what she understands about her child.”
“I think we watch over time as the family secrets kind of shatter her and shatter that bond and that closeness [with her son], and there is a deep grieving as she learns more about her child and is afraid for him,” Rossum explains. “I thought the script was so nuanced and complicated, and the more that you learn about mother and son, the more that you learn how parallel they are in their coping skills. How they’re both using the tool of denial, denial of the truths that they know about each other and that they know about themselves. Ultimately, I think there is a Shakespearean level of pain in families and in family secrets [on the show].”
Seyfried’s character, Rya, is also an imperfect mother who is navigating a demanding work life and the needs of her son. An accomplished professional, Rya is ambitious and steadfast, determined to crack Danny’s case even as her own son acts out following her divorce. As a working mother herself, Seyfried tells Shondaland she was drawn to the realism of Rya’s character and the struggle to find balance as a working mom.
“I approached it with open eyes and open heart because I think we all need a little reminding that it’s okay to have ambitions and career goals,” Seyfried says of her character. “You can still maintain a presence at home with your kids — especially when you have help and caregivers — and that it’s okay for your kids to see you leave to work to provide for them, but also to provide something for yourself. I also just find it really important to remind people that that’s a struggle, and it’s always going to be a struggle. It’s never going to be perfectly balanced at all times. It’s good to try to find that balance, but it’s healthy also to just struggle. No dynamic is 100 percent perfect, especially with Rya’s mother [who babysits her son], for instance. I love portraying that reality, the reality of doing many things at once in the world and being able to have it all.”
That desire for work-life balance was reflected in Seyfried’s own life as she was filming The Crowded Room. The mother of two says she was thrilled when she learned that not only could she bring her daughter to the set, but her child would be able to play with director Mona Fastvold’s daughter, who was also regularly visiting the set during filming.
“I love working with friends; I think I should be doing more of it. So many of my friends are artists in different mediums, and I love coming together and collaborating,” Seyfried says. “I love coming to work with my dog and then having my daughter visit, and getting to see Mona, one of our directors, and her daughter come, and our daughters playing [together] because you can have that without disrupting the set environment. And that they can create their own little world and be at work with their moms and feel safe and still have their own space. It’s so beautiful, and it’s something that Rya couldn’t do that I can do. I want to do it more, so it really reminded me of, like, merge the worlds when you can.”
The Crowded Room will premiere with three episodes on Friday, June 9, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday through July 28.
Mariel Turner is the Senior Culture Editor at Shondaland. Follow her on Twitter at @mariel_turner.
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