“It has allowed me to embrace something that I didn’t really know about myself,” admits Christopher Rand about working on “The Crowded Room.” For our recent webchat he adds, “I’m a feelings forward editor. This show wrung that out. To go for the jugular, get that feeling, be earnest and sentimental. This show isn’t about feeling cool, it’s about feeling things, engaging with them and talking about them.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
The Apple TV+ limited series, created by Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind”), stars Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried. It follows Danny (Holland) recounting his traumatic life in a series of interviews with Rya (Seyfried) after being arrested for a shooting in 1979. It explores mental illness and dealing with trauma. Rand explains, “All of us were really interested in emotional honesty, making sure this was a story that people who could connect to the themes, if not the narrative, could see their story in and connect with that. There’s a lot of really great storytelling today that’s really cynical. What drew me to this is that it’s not. The ultimate message is hope and our goal was to tell a good story and have folks who aren’t sure if they can ask for help, fell that they can.”
As editor, Rand had the job of portraying different perspectives and revealing psychological twists. He states, “every edit is a choice in perspective in the show. In the first five episodes, we wanted to live in Danny’s world. It’s a world of his own. We wanted to convey a world that makers the audience love Danny and empathise. The drama is seeing that world fall apart for him and him understanding how that world collides with reality.”
Rand reflects on the episode where a verdict is handed down for Danny. He says, “the thing that always got me wads the verdict. When we edit things, we watch things 800 times. For people doing a comedy, if you still laugh on the 800th time you’ve got something. The first time I took a whack at the verdict I remember getting a little misty and thinking it was going to work. And that just never went away. “
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