Tom Holland Is Taking A Break From Acting After Difficult Filming Experience

For several years now, Tom Holland has sat at the forefront of the Hollywood scene. Following in the footsteps of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, he's most notably won audiences over worldwide with his portrayal of Spider-Man. During his Marvel Cinematic Universe tenure, he's also taken on roles in films such as "Cherry," "Uncharted," and more. Most recently, he starred in Akiva Goldsman and Todd Graff's psychological thriller series "The Crowded Room" for Apple TV+ — a creative endeavor that has seemingly led to Holland taking an extended break from acting.

Speaking with Extra, Holland shared that in the wake of "The Crowded Room," he plans to take some well-deserved time off. "I'm now taking a year off, and, you know, that is a result of how difficult this show was," he explained during the interview. The series focuses on a troubled young man named Danny (Holland), who ends up in police custody following a shooting in New York City's Rockefeller Center in 1979. As the story progresses, the investigators get an informative yet harrowing glimpse into Danny's psyche and personal life, shedding light on why he committed such an act.

Later in the interview, Holland expresses his excitement to see "The Crowded Room" in its entirety and hopes that his hard work and the efforts of everyone else involved with the show weren't in vain. Sadly, most critics agree that the production doesn't quite live up to expectations.

At face value, "The Crowded Room" looks like an undeniable home run. With a cast featuring Tom Holland, Amanda Seyfried, and Emmy Rossum, to name a few, and a story that brings together the best of the crime and thriller genres, how could the limited series possibly fail? Evidently, for the vast majority of critics, the project that Holland, his co-stars, and the entire crew worked so hard on doesn't quite meet the mark. "The Crowded Room" sits at a rotten 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, with numerous negative assessments to accompany this score. 

"'The Crowded Room' proves out to be a disappointingly middling, uneven series," wrote Maria Lattila of WhyNow, and Collider's Chase Hutchinson made a point to highlight the show's unnecessarily sluggish pace. Nick Schager of The Daily Beast notes how odd it is that "The Crowded Room" gives up its big mystery right at the start, only to pretend it hasn't for the remainder of the season. As for Bob Strauss of the San Francisco Chronicle, he used the show to bring up a fascinating point that speaks to Holland's wider Hollywood run: "The young English actor has struggled to find a dramatic project equal to his charismatic talent."

Naturally, the prospect of Tom Holland taking some time away from film and television post-"The Crowded Room" will lead to speculation regarding his MCU future. After all, Spider-Man remains his biggest role to date, and with "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" now in theaters, fans are eager to know when they'll see him don the red and blue suit at the cinema again. Work on "Spider-Man 4" has stopped for the time being due to the Writers Guild of America strike, but even when production kicks up again, what does Holland's Spidey future look like?

To shed some light on his feelings toward the MCU and his Spider-Man role, Holland recently shared with Yahoo! Entertainment that he can go either way with it all at this point. "Should we find a way to tell his story and do justice to him, we will do so. But if we can't find a way to do that, and if we can't find a way to compete with the third one ['Spider-Man: No Way Home'], then you know, he'll swing off into the sunset." Thus, it seems that the future of Holland's Spider-Man is in the hands of the creative team behind the character and the skilled writers (who deserve liveable wages and fair working conditions) tasked with making his films a reality.

One of Tom Holland's last acting projects for a while, "The Crowded Room," reaches Apple TV+ on June 9.