One of the issues that always attract attention in casting issues is the ages of the actors versus the ages they represent and/or what is involved in it. In a new chapter we have the case of Emmy Rossum who, at 36, plays the mother of Tom Holland’s character (of 27) in ‘The Crowded Room’, the upcoming Apple TV+ series.
A difference of only 9 years in real life that, without a doubt, has raised more than one skeptical eyebrow about it. A small controversy from which Rossum herself has defended herself in statements to Entertainment Tonight, where he justifies this apparently short age difference:
«It makes sense when I read the script. Candy is a super young mom, she is almost a kid herself when she gets pregnant at 16 years old. You see how I age from 25 to 35, which is actually younger than I am now.”
As the actress rightly says, who starred in ‘Shameless’ for almost her entire career —and in fact, for that reason, she has experience in a matter of “raising” as a teenager— the question lies not so much in the ages of the actors but the ones that they are representing.
Mother, child and mental health
Specifically, Tom Holland’s character in ‘The Crowded Room’ He is around 19-20 years old, if he arrives. The first episode, in fact, shows us the life of Danny Sullivan as a misfit boy in high school. This would pretty much match the age at which he is supposed to have had Candy for her. Rossum also assures that he liked working with both the teenage Danny (Holland) and the child (Zachary Golinger):
“I fell in love with the relationship between mother and son and the closeness and everything they cry about in later episodes. I was really sucked into the series and really loved all my scenes, especially with young Danny. Our relationship was very beautiful and with that I knew everything we had and had lost in the scenes with Tom. It was fun.”
Created by Akiva Goldsman, the series is inspired by the first case in the United States of a murderer who is acquitted for having dissociation identity disorder. Along with Rossum and Holland, the cast includes Amanda Seyfried, Sasha Lane, Jason Isaacs and Lior Razamong others.
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