Loving him no matter what. Tom Holland is grateful that Zendaya was patient with him — and his hair — while filming his new series The Crowded Room.
“I think a large reason for that is when you make a film, it only takes four months, and that would be considered a long film. But The Crowded Room, it’s 10 months of playing this character, day in and day out. I really did find myself kind of morphing with him in certain moments. And obviously I had that crazy hairstyle,” Holland, 27, told Radio Times in an interview published earlier this month. “I had the bangs. Bless Zendaya, she had a lot to put up with, with me looking like that for 10 months, it was rough.”
The Spider-Man: Homecoming star noted that it wasn’t just the Euphoria actress, 26 — whom he’s been dating since 2021 — that had to deal with his coif. He wasn’t a fan of his hair being “that dark” himself — the tresses are a deep chestnut brown in the AppleTV+ series — and much prefers his hair more “like my mom’s, kind of red.”
“Yeah, it was tough. That was a part of the show that I don’t miss for sure,” he added.
The Crowded Room, which premiered on June 9, is a 10-episode psychological thriller set in Manhattan in the summer of 1979 that follows Danny Sullivan (Holland) after he is arrested for a shocking crime he allegedly didn’t commit. Unlikely investigator Rya (Amanda Seyfriend) must solve the mystery behind it before the true criminal strikes again. As Danny’s life story unfolds, it reveals “elements of the mysterious past that shaped him, and the twists and turns that will lead him to a life-altering revelation,” per the official synopsis.
The heavy material is something that Holland — who is also an executive producer on the series — found it hard to break away from when stepping off-set. “I would come home from work and I would see myself in the mirror and I would see him,” he told the outlet. “So it did take a while to figure out how to put him to bed and wake Tom up and get on with my life and be myself. But I figured it out and was very happy and healthy.”
While Holland is “no stranger to hard work,” the England native revealed earlier this month that he is pressing pause on acting as he recuperates from the intense emotional toll The Crowded Room took on him.
“The show did break me. There did come a time where I needed a break and disappeared and went to Mexico for a week and had time on a beach and laid low. I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was. I am excited to see how it turns out,” he told Extra in a Wednesday, June 7, interview. “I feel like our hard work wasn’t in vain.”
The Cherry actor’s recent vacation was seemingly alongside longtime love Zendaya. When Holland turned 27 earlier this month, the Shake It Up alum took to social media to celebrate his birthday — and shared photos of the twosome on their romantic getaway.
In one photo, Holland could be seen swimming in the ocean. Zendaya added a red heart emoji to the picture in between Holland’s hands which made a heart above his head. The second snap saw the British actor standing on a rocky cliff with the sun setting on the ocean behind him. Zendaya captioned the moment with a heart eyes emoji and tagged Holland in the post.
Holland and Zendaya first met in 2016 while working on Spider-Man: Homecoming. While romance rumors quickly followed, it wasn’t until July 2021 that the couple were spotted locking lips.
“Zendaya and Tom started off as really great friends and stayed that way for a long while before things turned romantic,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly at the time, sharing that the pair’s chemistry was ”off the charts” while filming their Marvel movie.
While the duo have since worked hard at keeping their relationship private, the Impossible star confessed to Total Film in November 2021 that he was “very happy and in love.”
The following year, Us confirmed that he and the Dune actress are still head over heels for one another.
“They’re both in settling-down mode and are absolutely planning for a real future together,” the insider revealed in November 2022, adding that the twosome seem “serious and permanent.”
