The opening moments of the final trailer for Netflix’s Ratched find the titular character revealing she was taken from her parents as a young child and lied to with a promise she’d see them again. The three-minute trailer explores how Mildred Ratched (played by Sarah Paulson) evolved into the evil nurse introduced in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, teasing her life could have been different if only someone had shown her a little mercy as a child.

The official trailer also shows the birth of the lobotomy, that procedure’s horrifying effects on patients, and the series’ twisted relationships.

Discussing her take on Nurse Mildred Ratched, Paulson stated, “In the story as it’s told in the film, there was so much to love about Jack Nicholson and all of the men in that ward. You wanted to spend time with them, you root for them, you want them to thrive, and she kept showing up and to the audience’s eye, impedes their opportunity for joy. I believe now that what she was ultimately doing was trying her damnedest to provide them with some help. She may have been limited in her thinking and adhering too stringently to the rules of that hospital, but she was trying to do what she believed to be right. It lacked humanity and that’s a really hard thing to watch, particularly when you have come to love those characters she’s in charge of.

It was interesting to keep all that in my mind – who she becomes down the road. As our story predates the movie by many many years, it turns out that in our story, she’s capable of far more than you might’ve imagined.”

In addition to Sarah Paulson, the cast includes Cynthia Nixon as Gwendolyn Briggs, Judy Davis as Nurse Betsy Bucket, Sharon Stone as Lenore Osgood, Jon Jon Briones as Dr. Richard Hanover, and Finn Wittrock as Edmund Tolleson. Charlie Carver plays Huck, Alice Englert is Dolly, Amanda Plummer is Louise, Corey Stoll is Charles Wainwright, Sophie Okonedo plays Charlotte Wells, Brandon Flynn is Henry Osgood, and Vincent D’Onofrio is Gov. George Wilburn.

Ratched was created by Evan Romansky and is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, Sarah Paulson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Aleen Keshishian, Jacob Epstein, Jennifer Salt, Margaret Riley, Michael Douglas, Robert Mitas, and Tim Minear. Murphy, Brennan, Salt, and Romansky wrote the one-hour drama.

Ryan Murphy directed episodes one and two, Nelson Cragg directed episode three, and Michael Uppendahl directed episodes four and five. Episode six was directed by Jessica Yu, episode seven was directed by Jennifer Lynch, and Dan Minahan directed the season finale.

Netflix has set a September 18, 2020 premiere date for the eight-episode dramatic series.

The Ratched Plot, Courtesy of Netflix:

“Ratched is a suspenseful drama series that tells the origin story of asylum nurse Mildred Ratched. In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born.”