Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain went through weeks of nursing school to prepare for Netflix’s The Good Nurse, a gripping drama based on the horrifying true story of serial killer Charles Cullen. Charles was employed as a nurse for 16 years, and over the course of his career is thought to have killed 400 patients. He confessed to killing 40 patients and is confirmed to having murdered 29.
Redmayne stars as the prolific serial killer who managed to operate under the radar for more than a decade. Chastain plays heroic nurse Amy Loughren who befriended Charlie before realizing he was killing patients. Amy went to the police with her suspicions and her willingness to wear a wire provided the evidence the police needed to make an arrest.
Director Tobias Lindholm and the film’s Oscar-winning stars were committed to accurately portraying nurses, and real doctors and nurses are featured in the background in scenes, rather than actors. They were also assisted by a nurse on set to ensure the medical scenes were correct.
“We spent a lot of time, of course, with saline bags and IVs,” said Chastain during a press conference hosted by Netflix for the Critics Choice Association. Chastain and Redmayne also learned how to properly take off gloves and do compressions correctly – not how the life-saving measure is normally portrayed on screen.
Eddie Redmayne said spending time with the real Amy Loughren and real nurses was one of the real treats of making The Good Nurse. “[…] Getting a sense of how dumbfounding it is, what they do. The thing that blew my mind is what a polymath you basically have to be to be a nurse. You have to be intellectually rigorous with science and math. The physical capability of moving bodies…that was something that I’d taken for granted, along with like the emotional intelligence you have to have to be able to be this conduit between doctors and families, you know, at the most vulnerable times.
If I wasn’t already impressed with what they did, by the time that we finished, we were both pretty astounded.”
Redmayne approached playing Charlie first by reading 2013’s The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber. The film covers the last third of the book, but the first two-thirds are what Redmayne calls an actor’s dream. “They’re a biographical, incredibly descriptive description of his life and his trauma,” explained Redmayne. After that, he worked with a dialogue coach and dancer to find Charlie’s unique physicality. Redmayne also credits Amy Loughren with providing him with details on her relationship with Charlie.
Chastain also read the book to help immerse herself in the story. Plus, she had the added benefit of being able to speak with the real Amy Loughren.
Chastain recalled that during one Zoom conversation she asked Amy Loughren why she chose to be a night nurse. “She said, ‘So my children would think that they had a stay-at-home mom.’ And I thought what does that mean? Okay, you’re working all night taking care of others and then you come home and you’re taking care of your children. And there’s the sense of like the selfless generosity that goes along with that, of wanting to care for others. And that was a huge way in for me,” explained Chastain.
Chastain continued: “And then we had our nurse/teacher Joe who was always on set with us, and there was a scene in the script of me taking care of a woman who was in a coma. There was no dialogue in it. But every time we had the opportunity to go to [Joe] and say, ‘What would we do? How would you do this scene?’ because you had to learn all the actions. As I was learning the actions, I talked to him about what it would be. He goes, ‘You know, you could just talk to her. She can hear you.’
And so, when we filmed that scene, I remember Tobias saying that he was watching it thinking he was not going to hear anything. All of a sudden, I just started talking to her and [Tobias was confused]. And that all came from being able to have the medical professionals on set with us.”
Since filming The Good Nurse both Chastain and Redmayne have become a little leery of having IVs. “I get those vitamin IVs sometimes, and I look at it when they’re putting it in. I look at the tube and I’m like, ‘Is that too much air in the tube? That’s too much air; that can be dangerous for me, right? That shouldn’t go in my blood,’’’ confessed Chastain, laughing.
“Straight after we finished doing The Good Nurse I was doing a musical in London. I was broke and tired, and they offered us one of those vitamin IVs. I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and then suddenly I saw this thing hanging and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do it!’” added Redmayne.
The Good Nurse will have a limited release in theaters on October 19, 2022, followed by a release on Netflix on October 26th.
The Plot: Amy, a compassionate nurse and single mother struggling with a life-threatening heart condition, is stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives, when Charlie, a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit.
While sharing long nights at the hospital, the two develop a strong and devoted friendship, and for the first time in years, Amy truly has faith in her and her young daughters’ future. But after a series of mysterious patient deaths sets off an investigation that points to Charlie as the prime suspect, Amy is forced to risk her life and the safety of her children to uncover the truth.
