There is truth among fiction that has sparked strong reactions from fellow trauma sufferers.
And then you find out what you are watching is the manifestation of a troubled mind.
Easier to hold back that reveal in a movie than in the eight episodes ofThe Crowded Room.
Tom Holland and Akiva Goldsman on the set of Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’Getty/Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
What was the trick in deciding how much information to dish, and when?
At one point, episode five, which is the abuse episode …
I actually wrote it as first to be the pilot.
Amanda Seyfried and Tom Holland in ‘The Crowded Room’
After shooting it, it was just too painful to start with.
So the crime came first and the abuse moved.
But I never really thought the show was that mysterious.
I never do this, but Ive been engaged with it on the internet, as people watched it.
DEADLINE:Why put yourself through that?
GOLDSMAN:I dont, I dont talk back, but theres aCrowded RoomTwitter which is very alive.
Just let them come to it.
For me it was never really a mystery, that he was in a world that was his own.
The story was really to watch him come to terms with that.
So he catches onto it much later than any of us.
No matter how quick you are as an audience member, or how slow, Dannys still behind you.
I run screaming from the internet typically, but this time has been extraordinarily gratifying.
My experience on the internet is not, unilaterally.
DEADLINE:People did not approve of the nipple costume Batman wore?
GOLDSMAN:They did not apparently approve of the nipple costume, to this day.
Maybe ifA Beautiful Mindwere around when there was Twitter, Id have seen it them.
But it has been overwhelming in that way.
The whole object here has been to reach people and it seemingly has done that.
What reactions most surprised you?
GOLDSMAN:I knew the show would be polarizing.
I never knew it would be quite this polarizing.
And that cause is, the sexual abuse of children.
This is something we dont like to think about, and so therefore we dont.
It can be unfathomable, but to really look at it head-on is pretty vital.
What happens when one is abused early and sexually as a child?
And typically in these cases of disassociated identity disorder by a parent or by an authority figure.
We need mommy, to live.
Were little, we cant take care of ourselves.
So, we hang on to mommy.
What happens if mommy or the daddy who protects us, is at the same time hurting us?
We have to love them to survive.
We have to attach to them to survive, but theyre hurting us in the most unimaginable ways.
And so the psyche fractures.
And when that person exits, then the other part of us comes back.
We all have ways of coping.
But this is spectacularly horrific, and both words are true.
It is horrific, but it is spectacular.
So we keep it secret, culturally.
Sometimes we keep it secret from ourselves.
DEADLINE:Who was this?
Its not something that I hide, but its not something I typically talk about.
But I wanted to talk about it in this show.
I wanted to reach out to folks like me, trauma survivors, sexual abuse survivors.
Im now of a certain age now and Im a dad.
You start to realize that these secrets cant be secret.
We have to talk about the hard things.
We have to tell stories that touch on the hard things.
So this show is confronting and triggering and profoundly uncool in its emotionality.
DEADLINE:Some talented people tried to adapt the bookThe Minds of Billy Milliganbefore.
James Cameron, Joel Schumacher, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Colin Farrell, and John Cusack.
How integral was your personal trauma in finding a way through after other attempts hit the wall?
I also think that they were leaning into the multiple personality disorder component.
But there are sort of faces of a prism when it comes to trauma.
Like, nobody in the show is doing particularly well.
Stan [the defense lawyer played by Christopher Abbott] is a drug addict.
Rya [the psychologist played by Amanda Seyfried] seems to be drinking way too much.
Candy [Dannys mother, played by Emmy Rossum] is locked into a terrible cycle of abuse.
You know, everybody is suffering from some kind of traumatic exposure.
Thats what Tom is so spectacular at doing.
How much of your own traumatic experience did you share with him?
GOLDSMAN:I was very open with him about my history, coming into this project.
I always say the work I do onStar Trekis self-selecting.
People who doStar Trekreally likeStar Trek.
Tom actually was un-occluded by a heavy burden of personal history.
But hes kind of a sponge.
Hes an empath in that way.
We shot for 130 days.
Thats just about a Marvel movie.
It was a grueling show to make emotionally for everyone.
DEADLINE:You go as far here as you want to.
You tell me you were molested from like 8 until your 20s.
I know you pretty well and I never wouldve imagined this.
How does this happen to you for such a prolonged period?
Did this guy get his just desserts?
GOLDSMAN:This guy did get his justice desserts, and he is dead some decades now.
It was somebody who was in a position of power.
It was the 70s, there were less guardrails on the world.
And this was a person who was well known to my family.
Mine was not an unstable home, but it wasnt a necessarily stable home.
There was a lot going on in my childhood.
And this person was an island of respite, according to my family system.
In a weird way, the system colluded, which often happens, in the abuse.
And no one knew.
Thats again why I say its important we talk about these things.
Because so many of us who experience any kind of abuse are trained to keep it secret.
It is written from the point of view, by somebody who has lived with that kind of shame.
But, you know, I got older.
I confronted the person, I reported the person.
We suffer, and from that suffering, we attempt to transform ourselves and the meaning of our suffering.
We make a run at make meaning out of the pain.
I can get flooded pretty easily.
I can get anxious.
I … thank god for Lexapro.
I think Ive never not been in therapy.
So, I was spared disassociate identity disorder.
And on a good day, art.
But I understand the shame.
GOLDSMAN:[Laughs] Yeah.
And I think people do.
There is nothing cool or slick or edgy or trendy about it.
Its incomprehensible, and yet it has to be addressed.
Well, I cant speak to that.
I wouldve loved to have seen any of their versions, quite frankly.
Im sure that might have solved other problems out there that need solving, or at least addressed them.
It has been awhile since people tried to take it on.
Now time goes on, and it becomes mythologized.
It turned it into genre, as does almost everything at a certain point.
Ours wasnt necessarily promising something new or revelatory.
Youll notice that it no longer even says, based onThe Minds of Billy Milligan.
It says inspired by.
Billy Milligans life was less complicated when Daniel Keyes wrote and published the book.
The book seems to have a happy ending.
And also the crimes are harder to get your head around.
DEADLINE:He was charged with rape.
I like to smuggle my own experience into other stories.
Its a sort of collaboration on the page.
WithA Beautiful Mindit was Sylvia Nasars wonderful biography.
And John didnt actively participate ininterviews, so it didnt really have any of his interior [perspective].
Here, I moved the story.
I created scenes out of my childhood.
Not the horrors of my childhood, just my childhood, in Brooklyn Heights, my school St. Anns.
Your protagonist here goes through the seven layers of hell to get to a point of understanding.
What sparked you to be able to say, Hey, this happened, and this guy did it?
GOLDSMAN:Well, first, I never forgot.
I just never talked about it.
I told myself it was OK.
I think that one thing that all trauma survivors will tell you is, we have symptoms.
Ive said it before and I say it in the show: traumas like time travel.
Theres a piece of you that always lives in that moment of trauma.
So its frozen there, and its very easy that to go hurtling back to that.
Thats the terrible thing about trauma.
You see this a lot in PTSD, and it spreads over time.
It starts to inform more and more of your life.
And if you notice that youre suffering, then you realize, youre only here once.
You should probably go get some help.
DEADLINE:You were about 22 when this stopped.
That would have been around the end of being a college undergrad.
GOLDSMAN:When I started to question, that was the beginning of the road to healing.
Its more than OK to ask for help.
It is your right to ask for help.
And that is what gets taken away when children are abused.
It can be seriously impacted when people suffer trauma.
All pain seems to be turned inward.
We like to blame ourselves.
It seems to be a very human quality.
It must be me.
And so we dont ask for help.
And we must, we must.
Its the only way to heal.
DEADLINE:Ill change gears here.
The biggest joys and challenges of slowly peeling your characters and plot over 10 episodes?
GOLDSMAN:I was vaguely naive about exactly what 10 straight serialized hours would be.
It was definitely harder than I thought.
Im a great believer in collaborative art.
I know its oxymoronic, but I do.
We put together a small writers room, predominantly women, and met by Zoom.
We broke the episodes and started writing.
It was really intricate, trying to slide the puzzle pieces around.
Really good taste, sophisticated when it comes to story and emotional beats.
Hes a really good judge of his own performance.
Like Russell Crowe was inA Beautiful Mind, hell try all sorts of different things.
Things changed, helped by writers like Greg Lessens.
The attempted suicide wasnt in the original draft.
We had from the beginning a very renowned panel of psychiatrists who were our advisory board, vetting everything.
Based on whats known today, because multiple personality disorder is no longer a diagnosis.
But in those days, fusion was the answer.
Out of that came the suicide attempt.
DEADLINE:Its a lot to unpack.
GOLDSMAN:I think it was not showing him as someone with a diagnosis, at the beginning.
That felt like the right way in.
So we could make the alters other people.
That felt like the way in.
DEADLINE:You poured a lot of yourself into this, maybe still looking for answers.
What was the most cathartic thing for you?
GOLDSMAN:I felt overwhelmed, the way people responded to the show.
And that it was OK, and a profound way of being seen.
And I learned some things too.
GOLDSMAN:Well, its a great question, Mike.
And if we do that, then weve taken power and made it useful.
And that may be what passes for grace.
