People were outraged last week after it was announced that actress Emmy Rossum of Shameless would be playing Tom Holland's mother in an upcoming Apple TV+ series.

Holland is 25 years old; Rossum is 35. The initial reaction to this move was pure confusion and outrage, as many jumped to the conclusion that this was simply another example of Hollywood placing 'expiration dates' on older actresses and refusing to use them in favor of younger, more traditionally "attractive" women to make the overall cast more widely appealing.

However, there's a perfectly logical explanation for this particular confusing age gap.

The show in question that the actors will be starring in is called The Crowded Room, and it tells the story of Danny Sullivan - a character loosely based on Billy Milligan, the first man ever to be acquitted of a crime for reason of insanity. 

Sullivan suffers from DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, a mental illness that causes one to split into several personas, or "alters," with little to no control over who is "driving" or who does what when they are.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is usually caused by a trauma that someone can't process; rather than dealing with the pain caused by the trauma, the mind invents an alternate persona who can deal with it in a different way. This is more common with traumas experienced in childhood.

Rossum is playing Holland's mother in this movie because she only appears in flashbacks - flashbacks to a trauma that happened when he was around five years old. That means Sullivan's mother is actually 30 years older than him, not the baffling 10 that we all thought before. Whew!

The Crowed Room is currently slated to premiere on Apple TV+ at the end of 2022.

Tags: Tom Holland Emmy Rossum