Note: The following interview was conducted prior to SAG-AFTRA joining the WGA on strike.
Though Apple TV+’s “The Crowded Room” was referring to mostly a metaphorical room, the show did in fact spend a lot of its time in one physical room — or at least, Amanda Seyfried’s character did. But in reality, she loved that.
Seyfried played Raya, a psychologist enlisted to interrogate Danny Sullivan (Holland) after he found himself caught up in a shooting at Rockefeller Center. For the most part, those questioning sessions all took place in a single room at the prison Danny was being held in, meaning that for most of the series, Seyfried was simply acting opposite Holland while sitting across a table from him.
But, in a lot of ways, that allowed the actress to play in an area she loves to get into.
“I love sitting. And I love silence,” Seyfried told TheWrap. “I love reacting. I love small, confined human connection. And I got that, so much of that, with Tom.”
Seyfried noted that the start of the show was harder than the later episodes, simply due to the balancing act they had to pull of in how much information and clues they could give up.
“In the beginning, we were just really building a relationship and giving clues but not too many and getting information but not too much,” she explained. “And it was a really delicate dance with the camera and with the audience. And then it ramped up.”
But, those interactions — particularly watching Holland take on multiple different characters — also allowed Seyfried to get into a kind of performing that she doesn’t often get to do. And that was even more exciting.
“That was surprising as an actor, getting to see this happen, and getting to react to it. And it’s just like, I’m getting to play in the circumstances that I’ve never gotten to play before,” she said excitedly. “And it’s all so refreshing for me as an actor. And it was fun! It was like we were just discovering all this stuff.”
You can watch TheWrap’s full interview with Amanda Seyfried in the video above.
All ten episodes of “The Crowded Room” are now streaming on Apple TV+.
